1. Cave art
A team of scientists has uncovered a series of engravings and drawings strategically placed in open air and within caves by prehistoric groups of Native American settlers that depict their cosmological understanding of the world around them.
2. Imported tortoise
Credit: Aldabran giant tortoise image via Shutterstock
Two millennia ago, millions of giant tortoises roamed Madagascar, an island nation off the southeastern coast of Africa that is rich in species found nowhere else on Earth.
Those tortoises kept Madagascar's unique ecosystem in check by munching on low-lying foliage, trampling vegetation and dispersing large seeds from native trees like the baobab.
3. Mini Neptunes
Astronomers using the planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft have found two planets circling different stars in the violent environment of an ancient open star cluster called NGC 6811 located about 3,300 light-years from Earth. Until now, four of the more than 850 planets known outside the solar system were spotted in clusters.
4. Amazing Sea Life
What lurks in the deep water off the most remote inhabited island in the world? This past month, a team of researchers trekked to Tristan da Cunha, an island in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, to find out.
5. Hardy mountain ranges
Landslides, or the lack thereof, may help mountain ranges remain far longer than previously thought, new research suggests.
6. Nuclear pasta!
A rare state of matter dubbed "nuclear pasta" appears to exist only inside ultra-dense objects called neutron stars, astronomers say.
7. Bizarre ancient creature
A new fossilized, cigar-shaped creature that lived about 520 million years ago has been unearthed in Morocco.
The new-found species, Helicocystis moroccoensis, has "characteristics that place it as the most primitive echinoderm that has fivefold symmetry," said study co-author Andrew Smith, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, referring to the group of animals that includes starfish and sea urchins.
8. Crazy ants swarm in electronics
Exterminator Mike Matthews got the call because the home's air-conditioning unit had short-circuited. Why an exterminator for a problem with an appliance? Because of the crazy ants.
9. Burrow buddies
Scientists have discovered a burrow in South Africa where two unlikely creatures shared a home before being entombed by a flash flood 250 million years ago.
The strange bedfellows were a beat-up young amphibian seeking shelter and a sleeping cynodont, considered a distant ancestor of mammals, researchers say.
10. Research as Art awards
Typically, you have to crack open the candy shell of a Kinder Surprise egg to find out what kind of toy surprise is tucked inside - that is, unless you have an X-ray micro-computed tomography scanner and a 3D printer.
11. Cryptobiotic soils
Climate change may transform the community of microbes that forms the crucial top layer of soil, known as a biocrust, in deserts throughout the United States, new research suggests.
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