- no horse remains or equestrian objects have been found, anywhere in India for this time period

- solid wooden wheels (shown in the reconstruction) are too heavy for horses to draw, for which spoked wheels were developed in the Steppe

- the shape of the yoke that would be tied to the animals is straight, the way ox carts have, like Harrapan ox carts. By contrast, yokes for horses are curved, to match the animal's posture.

I'm familiar with the concept of manufactured spend, and why credit card companies would try to clamp down on it. What I don't get is why the US Mint would care one way or the other for the concerns of credit card companies. The usual way to eliminate manufactured spend would be to add a credit card specific transaction fee that cancels out the spend points. By the Mint increasing the base price for everybody, this affects even people who might be paying with a debit card, or an ACH transaction (not sure if they're options, just positing).

Ancient DNA has certain characteristic damage that changes the sequence slightly, and you can use that to filter out any DNA that doesn't have that signature. Plus, you can maintain DNA profiles of all people involved in handling to ensure it's not modern contamination from the field workers or lab techs.

To be fair, the cause was conclusively identified as diclofenac only as late as 2004-2005. Even in papers published as late as 2003, various other, more likely culprits were being investigated, including pesticides, pathogens, or food scarcity. India moved to ban veterinary use of diclofenac by early 2005, slowed down by pushback from the Ministry of Agriculture for lack of an effective alternative vulture safe drug, which were only really demonstrated in studies in early 2006. Later that year diclofenac was banned.

As someone who lives & works in the Bronx, I haven't encountered any harassment in the Bronx lines. Pretty much every negative experience I've had on any subway line has been in Manhattan.