18 News WWW.PGCITIZEN.CA | FRIDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2014 MAIN — A diver wearing a new metal suit that allows humans to reach great depths without decompressing, descends over the Antikythera wreck off the island of Antikythera in southern Greece. INSET — A diver holds a bronze spear at the site of the wreck. The Associated Press Athens — Archaeologists armed with top-notch technology have scoured one of the richest shipwrecks of antiquity for overlooked treasures, recovering a scattering of artifacts amid indications that significant artworks may await discovery under the seabed. Lying 50 metres down a steep underwater slope off Antiky-thera Island, in southern Greece, the Roman commercial vessel’s wreck was accidentally located by sponge divers more than a century ago. Using primitive suits and assisted by the Greek navy, they raised marble and bronze statues, luxury tableware and the so-called Antikythera Mechanism, an entrancingly complex clockwork computer that tracked the cycles of the Solar system and could predict eclipses to a precise hour on a specific day. For years too deep for proper investigation, the wreck is now accessible through modern applied science. Over the past three weeks, a U.S. and Greek-led team comprehensively mapped the seabed, despite being hampered by strong winds that only allowed archaeologists a single day’s use of their star gadget - an Iron Man-like diving suit, likened to a wearable submarine, that can take its wearer more than 300 metres deep without the dangerous and time-consuming process of de- compression. A Greek Culture Ministry statement Thursday said divers raised sample artefacts - a bronze spear probably belonged to a larger than life-sized statue, metal fittings from the 1st century B.C. wooden ship, a pottery flask that may have contained wine or oil and a metal leg from a bed. But excavators hope much more may lie beneath the sand. “I don’t know what there is there - perhaps more works of art or parts of the ship’s equipment, but we really have to dig,” said Angeliki Simossi, head of Greece’s underwater antiquities department who co-ordinated the large team that included Greek Navy Seals. “[The spear] is not connected to any of the known sculptures from the wreck.” Simossi said the freighter, believed to have been sailing from a Greek island to Italy, was carrying works of art from Roman-conquered Greece that had been specifically requested by rich or cosmopolitan Romans to decorate their villas. “It was a floating museum, carrying works from various periods; one bronze statue dates from 340 B.C, another from 240 B.C, while the Antikythera Mechanism was made later,” she told the AP. “This was when the trade in works of art started.” The ship was at least 40 metres long, and sunk some time in the 1st century B.C. on what is still a busy trade route between mainland Greece and the southern island of Crete. Senior team archaeologist Brendan Foley, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said evidence from the site shows it to be “the largest ancient shipwreck ever discovered.” “It’s the Titanic of the ancient world,” he said. A survey of the seabed with metal detectors located strong signals which could point to ancient artefacts that eluded the first divers in 1901 - or to more mundane finds like the lead sheathing of the hull. Excavators hope to resume the survey next spring, a time of year when the weather should be better. “We have to continue, it can’t stay at this. But it’s very difficult, the sea is open,” Simossi said. “There’s an element of bad luck. Past investigations were also plagued by bad weather. It’s as if the wreck doesn’t want to be uncovered,” she added. AP PHOTOS NASA eyes heat trap The Associated Press WASHINGTON — A surprising hot spot of the potent global-warm-ing gas methane hovers over part of the southwestern U.S., according to satellite data. That result hints that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies considerably underestimate leaks of methane, which is also called natural gas. The higher level of methane is not a local safety or a health issue for residents, but factors in overall global warming. It is likely leakage from pumping methane out of coal mines. While methane isn’t the most plentiful heat-trapping gas, scientists worry about its increasing amounts and have had difficulties tracking emissions. A satellite image of atmospheric methane concentrations over the continental U.S. shows the hot spot as a bright red blip over the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah. The image used data from 2003 to 2009. Within that hot spot, a European satellite found at- mospheric methane concentrations equivalent to emissions of about 1.3 million pounds a year. That’s about 80 per cent more than the EPA figured. Other ground-based studies have calculated that EPA estimates were off by 50 per cent. The methane concentration in the hot spot was more than triple the amount previously estimated by European scientists. AP PHOTO The Four Corners area is seen with a major US hot spot for methane emissions Students' parents wait, hope The Associated Press TIXTLA, Mexico — Two weeks after 43 students disappeared in a clash with police in rural southern Mexico, dozens of anxious parents have gathered at a teachers college that was supposed to be their sons’ escape from life as subsistence farmers. They wait for any word on the fate of their children, eating simple meals of rice, beans and tortillas and holding prayer sessions in a makeshift shelter on the school’s covered courtyard. “They took him away alive, and that’s the way I want him back,” said Macedonia Torres Romero, whose son Jose Luis is among the disappeared. But it seems ever more unlikely as time passes and new graves are found. On Thursday, federal Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam announced that suspects had led investigators to four new mass graves near the southern city of Iguala where authorities unearthed 28 sets of badly burned bodies last weekend. “They said the bodies of the students were also dumped there,” Murillo Karam said. Forensic tests are being carried out to determine whether the first 28 bodies found are those of the missing students. Murillo Karam did not say how many bodies the new graves hold. A total of 34 people, including 26 Iguala police officers, have been arrested in the case. Prosecutors attribute the Sept. 26 disappearances to police, who killed six and wounded at least 25 in two separate attacks, after which officers rounded up some students and drove off with them.