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Fossils of what could be the oldest animal bodies have been discovered in Australia, pushing back the clock on when animal life first appeared on Earth to at least 70 million years earlier than previously thought. The results suggest that primitive sponge-like creatures lived in ocean reefs about 650 million years ago. Digital images of the fossils suggest the animals were about a centimeter in size (the width of your small fingertip) and had irregularly shaped bodies with a network of internal canals. The shelly fossils, found beneath a 635 million-year-old glacial deposit in South Australia, represent the earliest evidence...

Ruins of a fire temple dating back to the Sassanid era have recently been discovered during a series of archaeological excavations in the Vigol region near Kashan in central Iran. The discovery was made during the latest season of excavations, which are being carried out by a team of archaeologists led by Mohsen Javeri and began in mid-June, the Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization announced in a press release on Monday. The cruciform temple has four entrances leading to the ruins of a fireplace embellished with unique stucco designs, Javeri said. The team has also unearthed pieces of ornate...

Jerusalem, July 11, 2010 -- A tiny clay fragment – dating from the 14th century B.C.E. – that was found in excavations outside Jerusalem's Old City walls contains the oldest written document ever found in Jerusalem, say researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The find, believed to be part of a tablet from a royal archives, further testifies to the importance of Jerusalem as a major city in the Late Bronze Age, long before its conquest by King David, they say. The clay fragment was uncovered recently during sifting of fill excavated from beneath a 10th century B.C.E. tower...

Massimo Osanna, head of archaeology at Basilica University, said that the team working at Torre Satriano near Potenza in what was once Magna Graecia had unearthed a sloping roof with red and black decorations, with "masculine" and "feminine" components inscribed with detailed directions on how they slotted together. Professor Christopher Smith, director of the British School at Rome, said that the discovery was "the clearest example yet found of mason's marks of the time. It looks as if someone was instructing others how to mass-produce components and put them together in this way"" he told The Times. Professor Osanna suggested...

A strange and mysterious new object in space may the brightest and long-lasting "micro-quasar" seen thus far, a miniature version of the brightest objects in the universe. The object suddenly began pumping out radio waves last year in the relatively nearby galaxy M82, some 10 million light-years away. Its discovery was announced Tuesday. "The new object, which appeared in May 2009, has left us scratching our heads — we've never seen anything quite like this before," said researcher Tom Muxlow, a radio astronomer at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory in England. M82 is a "starburst galaxy," one that...

LAS VEGAS, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Recently some rare and unreleased John Lennon recordings were discovered in a vault. These recordings were taped on August 19, 1980. They were done separately from the mysteriously missing video footage that was filmed at what is believed to be John Lennon's last recording session with his band prior to his death. Even more incredible, these recordings have never been released until now.

Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) city ruins have been discovered in Wuyuan County, Hetao Plain, China's Inner Mongolia. It's said that the scale of the city ruins is rarely seen in Hetao Plain. The city ruins are located in Taal Town of Wuyuan County, Bayannaoer City in China's Inner Mongolia and once covered with grassland. The city wall was about 2 km long and 1 km wide and is made up of compressed earth. The east wall is 2 meters high and remarkably preserved, while, the south wall has already collapsed and is now a road base 80 centimeters high...

The ancient footprints of the artisans who built a stunning 1,700-year-old mosaic floor in Lod were discovered recently, when conservators from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) were in the process of detaching the huge work of art from the ground. As the conservation experts worked on the plaster bedding to be done before detaching the mosaic, they were surprised to notice there were ancient foot and sandal prints beneath it. Clearly, the builders that had worked on the floor sometimes wore their sandals, and sometimes worked in their bare feet...

The largest-ever known number of coins from the time of Bar-Kochba, the Jewish leader against Roman invaders, has been discovered in the Judean Hills by cave researchers from Hebrew and Bar-Ilan Universities.

A newly found primordial blob may represent the most massive object ever discovered in the early universe, researchers announced today. The gas cloud, spotted from 12.9 billion light-years away, could signal the earliest stages of galaxy formation back when the universe was just 800 million years old. "I have never heard about any [similar] objects that could be resolved at this distance," said Masami Ouchi, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution in Pasadena, Calif. "It's kind of record-breaking." A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). An object 12.9 billion light-years...

(IsraelNN.com) Saudi Arabia-funded textbooks distributed in American schools teach that Muslims discovered America and that Jesus was a Palestinian, according to repot by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research. Anti-Zionist propaganda is prominent in the books that were written at Middle East centers at universities, including Harvard, which received a $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in 2005. The textbooks, distributed in all 50 states in the U.S., also teach that the Almighty revealed the Koran to the Muslim prophet Mohammed and that Jewish civilization contributed "very little" to the arts and sciences.

As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered. Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow." The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude. When scientists talk about the observable universe, they don't just mean as far out as the eye, or even the most powerful telescope, can see....

MADRID (AFP) - Spanish astronomers Wednesday announced the discovery of the smallest planet discovered to date outside the solar system, located 30 light years from earth. The planet, "GJ 436T", was detected through a new technique which "will allow us to discover in less than 10 years the first planet resembling earth in terms of mass and orbit," said Ignasi Ribas of Spain's CSIC scientific research institute. It was discovered by a team led by Ribas through its gravitational pull on other planets already discovered around the same star in the constellation of Leo. "GJ 436T" has a mass five...

Italy: Plague victims discovered after 1500 years Rome, 10 April (AKI) - The remains of hundreds of victims, believed to have been killed in a plague that swept Italy 1500 years ago, have been found south of Rome. The bodies of men, women and children were found in Castro dei Volsci, in the region of Lazio, during excavations carried out by Lazio archaeological office. News of the extraordinary discovery was reported in the magazine, "Archeologia Viva". The victims are believed to have been victims of the Justinian Plague, a pandemic that killed as many as 100 million people around the...

LUXOR, Egypt (AFP) - Egyptian and European archeologists on Saturday announced they had discovered a giant statue of an ancient pharaonic queen on the spectacular south Egypt site of the Colossi of Memnon. The statue represents Queen Tiy, the wife of 18th dynasty Pharaoh Amenhotep III, and stands 3.62 metres high (almost 12 feet). It was discovered around the site of the massive Colossi of Memnon twin statues that command the road to Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings. Two sphinx representing Tiy and Amenhotep III as well as 10 statues in black granite of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, who...

New Babylonian town found Azzaman, March 19, 2008 Iraqi archaeologists have discovered a new Babylonian town 180 kilometers south of Baghdad. The head archaeologist Mohammed Yahya said the town is more than 20,000 square meters in area and includes administrative quarters, temples and other buildings of “magnificent and splendid design” Yahya, who is the head of the provincial Antiquities Department in the Province of Diwaniya, where the new Babylonian town was discovered, said he still lacks evidence on the town’s ancient name. The locals call it Shamiya after a provincial district nearby, he said. “We have dug up a sectional...

State wildlife officials say a destructive species known as the zebra mussel has been discovered in California for the first time. Department of Fish and Game spokeswoman Alexia Retallack says a fisherman found the mollusks while fishing in the San Justo Reservoir in San Benito County. Lab tests conducted Monday confirmed that the creatures were zebra mussels, which are known to clog water pipes and boat engines and alter the chemistry of marine ecosystems. State officials plan to conduct further surveys to determine the extent of the infestation and develop a plan to stop its spread. They're asking fishermen and...

Researchers in a remote jungle in Indonesia have discovered a giant rat - five times the size of a typical city rat - and a tiny possum that are apparently new to science. Unearthing new species of mammals in the 21st century is very rare. The discoveries by a team of American and Indonesian scientists are being studied further to confirm their status. The animals were found in the Foja mountains rainforest in eastern Papua province in a June expedition, said US-based Conservation International, which organised the trip along with the Indonesian Institute of Science. "The giant rat is about...

Rare Maya "Death Vase" Discovered Blake de Pastino National Geographic News Updated December 4, 2007 An extremely rare and intricately carved "death vase" has been discovered in the 1,400-year-old grave of an elite figure with ties to the Maya Empire, scientists say. The vase is the first of its kind to be found in modern times, and its contents are opening a window onto ancient rituals of ancestor worship that included food offerings, chocolate enemas, and hallucinations induced by vomiting, experts say. Archaeologists discovered the vase along with parts of a human skeleton while excavating a small "palace" in northwestern...

NEW YORK - Sixty-five years after an American P-38 fighter plane ran out of gas and crash-landed on a beach in Wales, the long-forgotten World War II relic has emerged from the surf and sand where it lay buried. Beach strollers, sunbathers and swimmers often frolicked within a few yards of the aircraft, unaware of its existence until last summer, when unusual weather caused the sand to shift and erode. The revelation of the Lockheed "Lightning" fighter, with its distinctive twin-boom design, has stirred interest in British aviation circles and among officials of the country's aircraft museums, ready to reclaim...