A geyser erupts, a coral species discovered and even the North Pole lake disappears all in our image picks this week. Read on to see more.
1. Roaring to Life
Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser erupted for the first time in eight years on Wednesday (July 31) afternoon, drenching delighted viewers who stood in the spray from the safety of a nearby boardwalk.
The unexpected blast occurred at 7:30 p.m. MDT (9:30 p.m. EDT), shooting water and steam 200 to 300 feet (60 to 90 meters) into the air. The spectacular display lasted nine minutes, but the steam continued through the night, said Dan Hottle, a spokesman for Yellowstone National Park. After the geyser exhausts its water supply, steam usually continues to vent for about 24 hours, he said.
2. Rare find
Credit: © 2003 Calvin J. Hamilton ScienceViews.com
Huge meat-eating dinosaurs that stalked a vast floodplain some 150 million years ago in what is now Portugal left behind traces of their progeny: eggshells.
Some of the eggshells, which belonged to two Jurassic-Era theropods, or a group of carnivorous dinosaurs, once harboured embryos of Torvosaurus, the largest predator of its day.
3. Dazzling discovery
In the remote Gambier Islands in French Polynesia, researchers have found a striking species of reef-building coral that was previously unknown to science.
The new species, dubbed Echinophyllia tarae, is a type of stony coral or Scleractinia. These marine animals are quite ancient and they form hard skeletons that make up much of the scaffolding of today's coral reefs.
4. Solving a mystery
New observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have helped astronomers crack a longstanding puzzle about galaxy evolution.
For years, scientists have wondered why galaxies that have ceased forming new stars - so-called "quenched galaxies" - were smaller long ago than they are today. Perhaps, they thought, ancient quenched galaxies continued to grow by merging with smaller cousins that had also stopped producing stars.
5. Staying put
The huge iceberg that broke off of Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier (PIG) on July 8 hasn't budged from the coastline of the southernmost continent, to move out into Pine Island Bay and the Amundsen Sea, a new false-colour satellite image of the glacier and its iceberg show.
The image, featured on NASA's Earth Observatory, shows that the 280-square-mile (720-square-kilometre) iceberg hasn't moved much since it first formed. The new image was taken by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite on July 14. How long it will take the iceberg to move out to sea is unclear, the Earth Observatory reports, noting that rock and ice could be creating friction that is impeding the iceberg's movement. Winds and currents could also be pressing the iceberg against the coast, as could sea ice, emeritus NASA scientist Robert Bindschadler, who has studied PIG for more than a decade, told the Earth Observatory.
6. Strange grave
A month-long dig has come to an end at the site where King Richard III's grave was discovered under a parking lot in Leicester, England, last summer.
Archaeologists report today (Aug. 1) they've made some great finds over the past four weeks, including more skeletons, an intact piece of the lost monastery's floor and a mysterious coffin-within-a-coffin.
7. Dangerous bite
When a little girl's spider bite developed into a nasty open wound, doctors had to perform two procedures to remove blackened, dead tissue from her leg, researchers say.
Five days after being bitten by a spider, the girl - a 10-year-old living in northeast Mexico - developed a 2-inch lesion of dead tissue, along with swelling and a fever. Researchers suspect the bite came from a brown recluse spider, a venomous spider that is most commonly found in the south and central United States, including Texas.
8. Ancient object
Hidden in a sealed part of an ancient Peruvian temple, archaeologists have discovered a feathered shield dating back around 1,300 years.
Made by the Moche people, the rare artefact was found face down on a sloped surface that had been turned into a bench or altar at the site of Pañamarca. Located near two ancient murals, one of which depicts a supernatural monster, the shield measures about 10 inches (25 centimetres) in diameter and has a base made of carefully woven basketry with a handle.
9. As quickly as it came
Like a politician whose peccadillos lead to "family time," the North Pole lake has had its fill of Internet notoriety. The stunning blue meltwater lake that formed on the Arctic ice disappeared on Monday (July 29), draining through a crack in the underlying ice floe.
Now, instead of 2 feet (0.6 meters) of freshwater slopping against a bright-yellow buoy, a remote webcam shows only ice and clouds.
10. Bizarre ants
A total of 33 previously unknown ant species have been discovered in Central America and the Caribbean. The nearly blind ants live in leaf litter and rotten logs in rainforests and are all quite tiny, each less than one-twelfth of an inch (2 millimetres) in length, according to new research.
Scientists named about one-third of the ants after Mayan deities, said Jack Longino, an entomologist at the University of Utah, in a statement from the school.
11. A truck-load of trash
In an area of Hawaii, far removed from most human habitation, a recent clean-up effort yielded an 18-wheeler's worth of human debris during a 19-day anti-pollution campaign this year.
The region, which includes Midway Atoll, some 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometres) from the Hawaiian mainland, acts as a "fine-tooth comb" in picking up debris from elsewhere, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Live Science. Broken fishing gear, tattered nets and plastic fragments litter the water and land on the beaches.
12. Giant first
Xiao Liwu, the charismatic panda cub born at the San Diego Zoo last year, celebrated his first birthday today with a towering three-tiered "cake" made from ice and bamboo, decked out with yams, apples, and shaved carrots.
The giant panda cub, whose name means "little gift," was born on July 29, 2102, the sixth offspring for mother Bai Yun.
13. Innocence lost
Three Incan children who were sacrificed 500 years ago were regularly given drugs and alcohol in their final months to make them more compliant in the ritual that ultimately killed them, new research suggests.
Archaeologists analyzed hair samples from the frozen mummies of the three children, who were discovered in 1999, entombed within a shrine near the 22,100-foot (6,739 meters) summit of the Argentinian volcano Llullaillaco. The samples revealed that all three children consistently consumed coca leaves (from which cocaine is derived) and alcoholic beverages, but the oldest child, the famed "Maiden," ingested markedly more of the substances. Coca was a highly controlled substance during the height of the Inca Empire, when the children were sacrificed.
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