The ship's ram was found on the sea floor off Sicily at a depth of nearly 90 m.
There is an enduring fascination with wrecks because of how they connect us to the past and because of the potentially priceless treasures that could be found within their sunken remains. Since sea creatures inevitably colonize the wreck, scientists are interested in studying how marine ecosystems evolve and thrive. A paper published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science states that more than 100 distinct animal species were found on a 2,200-year-old Mediterranean shipwreck.
"Shipwrecks are often studied to follow colonization by marine organisms, but few studies have focused on ships that sank more than a century ago," said co-author Ricci of Rome's Istituto Centrale per il Restauro. For the first time, we study the colonization of a wreck for more than 2,000 years. We show that the ram has a similar community to the surrounding habitat due to the free movement of species between it and the surroundings.
Carthage and Rome fought three wars in the 3rd century BC. The first war began in Sicily in the year 260 BC and lasted for 23 years. The First Punic War was written by Polybius, who was a Roman hostage, about a century after the war ended. Polybius' accounts are still relied on by most modern historians, even though there has been some debate about the accuracy of his accounts.
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The Battle of the Aegates took place on March 10, 241 BCE. The Romans had been blockaded against the Carthaginians for years. They had to borrow money to build a fleet to extend their blockade. The Romans were better trained than the Carthaginians. Sicily was ceded to Rome in the Treaty of Lutatius by the Carthaginians.
The ship's ram and marine animals are in this picture.
Several artifacts believed to be from this battle have been recovered off the coast of Western Sicily. Archaeologists have found bronze rams from sunken warships. These weapons were designed to break through the hull of enemy ships and were fitted to the bow of ancient galleys. There are 10 bronze helmets and hundreds of Amphorae. The rams, seven of the helmets, and six complete Amphorae have been recovered. Archeologists determined that four rams came from Roman ships, and one came from a Carthaginian ship, based on their dimensions.
The ship's ram was recovered in 2017. The ram has been on the ocean floor for more than 2,000 years, so it has had a long time to become part of a stable marine environment. The authors wrote that the ram has trapped mineral structures and fragments of species living in the surrounding habitats. The ram is an archaeological artifact and highlights the dynamics of biological colonization on a large spatial scale.
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The ram was restored in 2019. The scientists at ICR carefully documented all the biological materials that had accumulated inside and outside the hollow artifact. The samples were carefully cleaned before being examined. The remains were preserved in petri dishes for analysis.
Researchers are sampling marine animals from a ship.
The researchers were able to identify 114 different species of arthropods that lived in the 2,200-year-old ram. They compared the findings to species found in Mediterranean habitats in order to learn more about how the ram had been colonized.
The primary 'constructors' in this community are organisms such as polychaetes, bryozoans, and a few species of bivalves. The wreck's colonies attach themselves directly to the surface, according to co-author Edoardo Casoli. Bryozoans act as 'binders', their colonies form bridges between the calcareous structures produced by the constructors. There are 'dwellers', which aren't attached but move freely between the cavities. We don't know what the order in which these organisms colonize wrecks.
The co-author Maria Flavia Gravina said that the younger shipwrecks have a less diverse community than their environment. The ram is more representative of the natural habitat than the other way around: it hosted a diverse community, including species with long and short larval stages, with sexual and asexual reproduction, and with sessile and motile adults, who live in colonies or solitary. Our ram can act as a novel kind of sampling tool for scientists, which can act as an "ecological memory" of colonization.
The journal Frontiers in Marine Science was published in 2021. About DOIs is a part of the 10.3389/fmars.
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