Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Novgorod Codex was uncovered on the 13th of July 2000 by a team led by professor Valentin Yanin. The excavation took place in the Trinity area of Veliky Novgorod within a layer situated 50 centimeters away and 30 centimeters below a wooden walkway dated to the year 1036.
Scientists estimate the Novgorod Codex was placed around 1015 or 1020 based on dendrochronology analysis of surrounding wood. Radiocarbon dating performed at Uppsala University in Sweden provided a range between 760 and 1030 with high certainty while experts now place the artifact reliably within a 42-year window spanning from 988 to 1030.
The Novgorod Codex consists of three bound wooden tablets measuring 19 by 15 by 1 centimeter each. Two tablets feature one wax layer and one blank wooden side while the third has two wax sides held together by round holes along one edge that contained wooden pegs.
Russian linguist Andrey Zaliznyak reconstructed portions of texts hidden within thousands of superimposed scratches found on the Novgorod Codex. He described the resulting mess of lines as a hyper-palimpsest because traces of tens of thousands of letters overlapped each other requiring weeks to identify meaningful words.
A translation of Psalms 75 and 76 appears alongside a small fragment of Psalm 67 within the Novgorod Codex. One reconstructed text introduces an unnamed author who identifies himself as Alexander the Areopagite of Thracia while another passage states that heretics are excluded from the church in this world town.