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TENTACLED monsters, pale skinny humanoids, shimmery beings of pure energy... When it comes to the question of what alien life forms might look like, we are free to let our imagination roam. The science-in-waiting of extraterrestrial anatomy has yet to acquire its first piece of data, so nobody knows what features we will behold if and when humans and aliens come face-to-face. Or face to squirmy something. Despite this lack of hard evidence, a blend of astronomy and earthly biology offers some clues to what is out there. A few bold scientists are even willing to make an educated guess...

Traces of an unknown lifeform have been found in rocks in a secret location in Devon in south west England. The animal, which made large burrows through sediment at the bottom of desert wadis in Torbay some 260 million years ago,could be unknown to science. Scientists from around the world will be informed of the mystery when the findings are officially published later this year. It comes as nine other sites in the area have been officially recognised as of national and international importance geologically. Geologist Kevin Page from Plymouth University, said they had been unable to find any known...

December 23, 2006 From Scum, Perhaps the Tiniest Form of Life By WILLIAM J. BROAD The smallest form of life known to science just got smaller. Four million of a newly discovered microbe — assuming the discovery, reported yesterday in the journal Science, is confirmed — could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. Scientists found the microbes living in a remarkably inhospitable environment, drainage water as caustic as battery acid from a mine in Northern California. The microbes, members of an ancient family of organisms known as archaea, formed a pink scum on green pools of...

LAKELAND, FLA. - Urban legends are supposed to be legends and that's all. But if you ask Jennifer Ward about the Florida skunk ape, she will tell you it stepped out of the mists of myth and into reality. "I never thought anything like that was out there before," Ward, 30, said recently. "But I know there is now." Ward's encounter with the hairy creature came in August, about a week after Hurricane Charley, along a rural stretch of road as she was driving home from a friend's house. Her daughters were asleep in the back seat and it was...