They\u2019re culture vultures.<\/p>\n
A 700-year-old sandal and several other hand-crafted cultural artifacts were found in the breeding nest of a bone-eating vulture in Spain, according to a newly published paper.<\/p>\n
The medieval footwear was discovered by a team of researchers studying the nests of bearded vultures on the cliffs of the southern parts of Spain between 2008 and 2014, according to research<\/a> published in September in The Scientific Naturalist.<\/p>\n The bone-eating Bearded Vulture is known to reuse previously occupied nests, with some being used for centuries. Sergio Couto\/Margalida et al., Ecology, 2025<\/p>\n The woven shoe dates back to the 13th century according to researchers. Sergio Couto\/Margalida et al., Ecology, 2025<\/p>\n One of the 12 nests surveyed dates back to at least the 13th century and contained several handcrafted objects of similarly shocking vintage.<\/p>\n Most remarkably, they found a \u201ccomplete sandal made of esparto grass cord\u201d which dates back roughly 700 years.<\/p>\n In that same nest, researchers detected a fragment of \u201cochre-painted sheep leather\u201d from as far back as 650 years ago.<\/p>\n Another nearby nest had an 18th century basketry fragment, according to the paper.<\/p>\n Researchers also uncovered a number of other handcrafted and very old materials \u2014 including a crossbow bolt and its wooden lance, a slingshot, and another piece of fabric believed to be hundreds of years old.<\/p>\n One of the cliff top nests of the Bearded Vulture in Spain. Sergio Couto\/Margalida et al., Ecology, 2025<\/p>\n \u201cWe knew that the bearded vulture is a transporting species that can carry objects to tis nest for construction, but we were surprised by the number of objects found and their age,\u201d said the study\u2019s lead author Antoni Margalida from the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology at the Spanish National Research Council, CNN<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n \u201cThis means that these sites, used for centuries, are quality locations that different generations have used for breeding.\u201d<\/p>\n Bearded vultures, also called ossifrages, can have wingspans as long as 10-feet and feed mostly on bone matter.<\/p>\n \u201cThis study sheds new light, and really a whole new angle on the place of the Bearded Vulture in our understanding of the interplay between a fascinating bird and the history of human culture,\u201d John Fitzpatrick, director emeritus for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, told CNN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They\u2019re culture vultures. A 700-year-old sandal and several other hand-crafted cultural artifacts were found in the breeding nest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[7223,79,3662,3284,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-215610","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-birds","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-spain","11":"tag-study-says","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}