Filter-Feeding "Giant Lobster"

Paleontologists have discovered a previously unknown giant fossil (Aegirocassis benmoulae) of the anomalocaridids group living about 480 million years ago that used tiny spines on appendages to filter-feed much like modern-day whales, providing insight into that early marine environment.

Oldest Known Human Ancestor

Researchers have unearthed a jawbone in Ethiopia of an as-yet unnamed Homo ancestor dating back about 2.8 million years, more than 400,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known human fossil evidence and supporting timelines of the transition of our species from Australopithecus to Homo.

New Seadragon Species Found

Scientists have identified a previously unknown third distinct species of the exotic seadragon, named the ruby seadragon (Phyllopteryx dewysea) after its unusual bright red coloration, while analyzing DNA from tissue samples believed to be from the two known species, the leafy and common seadragons.

Earth's Inner Inner Core

Reading seismic waves that resonate in the aftermath of an earthquake, seismologists have discovered the dense, inner core at the center of the Earth has itself a distinct inner core of about half the diameter, both cores composed of iron crystals but with different and unique properties, possibly different crystalline phases.

No Evolution for 2 Billion Years

Scientists examining microfossils of deep-sea sulfur bacteria from Western Australia's coast found them virtually indistinguishable from those in older samples and the same sulfur bacteria today, an example of more than 2 billion years of no evolution in a static environment that confirms rather than challenges current evolutionary theory.

Planet's Giant Ring System

Astronomers have detected the first exoplanet (J1407b) with an extensive ring system similar to Saturn but about 200 times larger than those of our own ringed planet, possibly a young planetary system in an early transient phase of satellite formation.

Long-Necked Dinosaur Found

A previously unknown species of long-necked dinosaur (Qijianglong) has been discovered in China belonging to the group known as mamenchisaurids, characterized by extremely long and relatively lightweight necks measuring up to half their total body length.

"Vibrational" Chemical Bond

Chemists have confirmed the existence of a type of temporary "vibrational" chemical bond between atoms of bromine and muonium, a hydrogen isotope, initially proposed in 1989 with the tiny muonium atom rapidly moving between and holding together two heavier bromine atoms.

"Unbeatable" Poker Algorithm

Game theorists have developed a computer algorithm known as counterfactual regret minimization for the heads-up limit hold’em (HULHE) poker variant that is "virtually unbeatable," rendering this particular strategy so close to perfect as to consider the game solved.

Unknown Egyptian Queen

Archaeologists working in Abu-Sir southwest of Cairo have discovered the tomb of a previously unknown Egyptian queen, named Khentakawess III after wall inscriptions, believed to be the wife or mother of Pharaoh Neferefre who ruled about 4500 years ago.

Isolated Humpback Whales

Researchers studying humpback whales that inhabit the Arabian Sea and northern Indian Ocean have found them to be the most genetically distinct whales in the world, suggesting this long-distance migrating population has remained isolated from other whales for 70,000 years.

Homo erectus Art on Seashell

A pattern recently discovered on a seashell originally discovered Java in the 1890s reveal 500,000-year-old deliberate engravings ascribed to Homo erectus, the first evidence of abstract thought from that extinct hominid species.

Two New Subatomic Particles

The "Beauty" experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHCb) has identified two never-before-seen baryonic particles named Xi_b′ and Xi_b*, each one consisting of a beauty (b), a strange (s) and a down (d) quark.

Ancient Gene-Hoarding Shrub

An ancient flowering, evergreen shrub (Amborella) that only grows on a single Pacific archipelago off the eastern coast of Australia has absorbed the entire mitochondrial genes of a moss, three green algae and several hundred genes from an unknown number of flowering plants for a bloated genome orders of magnitude larger than any other known plant.