Early Humans in Eurasia

Stone artefacts found in sediment layers 1.86 million years old found at the Dmanisi site in the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia give evidence of toolmaking millions of years before Homo erectus was thought to have evolved and migrated out of Africa, challenging its African-only origins.

New Elements Added to Table

After a three-year review, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has added two new elements to the periodic table, temporarily designated only by their unofficial names of ununquadium (Uuq, 114) and ununhexium (Uuh, 116).

New Model for Mars' Size

A new mathematical model and simulation of the formation of our solar system explains why Mars has only one tenth the mass of Earth or Venus, with Jupiter migrating to within 1.5 AU of the Sun while accumulating mass, robbing Mars of much of the raw material for planet formation.

Moving Mirrors Create Light

Physicists have developed a method of drawing light from an empty vacuum by causing tiny superconducting mirrors to "wiggle" at around 5% the speed of light, collecting virtual photons into a light source and confirming a basic tenet of quantum mechanics.

Deepest-Living Animal

A newly discovered nematode species (Halicephalobus mephisto) has been found living at a depth of 2.2 miles under the Earth's surface, making it the deepest-living animal yet found and suggesting a richer biosphere at those depths than previously suspected.

Dolphins Killing Porpoises

Three acts of unprovoked dolphin aggression have been documented with animals off the coast of California in which groups of bottlenose dolphins rammed and drowned lone porpoises and then played with the carcass, supposedly due to frustrations of breeding males without access to females.

Female Fish with Testes

A recent study of Atlantic croaker fish living in the Gulf of Mexico show that the annual low-oxygen "dead zone" caused by agricultural and waste runoff of the Mississippi River shows the female fish developing malformed testes, a result of hypoxia to the brain during sexual development reducing production of estrogen and necessary neurohormones with as little as ten weeks exposure.

Roman Fish Tanks

A Roman commerce ship dating back to the second century A.D. discovered off the coast of Grado in northeastern Italy included a mysterious lead pipe piercing its hull that archaeologists now believe was part of a pumping system to keep and transport live fish to markets across the Mediterranean Sea.

Reindeer See Ultraviolet

A new study demonstrates that reindeer are able to see ultraviolet wavelengths, a relatively recent evolutionary adaptation since migrating to the Arctic 10,000 years ago in which frozen landscapes can reflect as much as 90% of UV light.

Blackbeard's Ship Anchor

The recently discovered 13-foot-long anchor from pirate Edward Teach's ("Blackbeard") ship Queen Anne's Revenge is to be raised for the first time since the ship was sunk off the coast of North Carolina in 1718, the second-largest of more than 250,000 artifacts from the historic site.

Crystal Rain on Proto-Star

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected a proto-star in the constellation Orion that has tiny green crystals of the mineral olivine (forsterite) raining down on the star from its surrounding clouds of dust and gas.

Giant Ancient Sea Predators

Paleontologists have discovered extremely well-preserved fossils in Morocco of a group of prehistoric giant sea predators named anomalocaridids that grew larger and lived longer that previously believed, measuring over a meter long and spilling over into the Ordovician period when previously thought extinct at the end of the Cambrian.

Densest Matter Created

Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has created a quark-gluon plasma, the densest known material outside of black holes and a state that has not existed naturally since a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.

Bacteria in Hailstones

A high concentration of bacteria have been discovered at the inner core of hailstones recovered after storms, suggesting that airborne microorganisms may play a part in weather events as nucleating particles for precipitation.