After the humor of watching Zahi Hawass knock a chunk out of an ancient tomb lid without any sign of concern, we have this:

Archaeologists working in Teotihuacan are confident of finding the tomb of a king within the Pyramid of the Moon. Unlike Egypt, in Central America the bodies of kings often get found within pyramids. They are very close...

Unlike Egypt (what happened to the broken door handles and have they been analysed, Zahi?), they'll probably tell us what they find!

"Much uncertainty surrounds the mysterious object, designated J002E3. It could be a passing chunk of rock captured by the Earth's gravity, or it could be a discarded rocket casing coming back to our region of space."

It is in a 50 day orbit, and if it is natural the estimated size is a metre 50 metres diameter.

If it proves to be something not man-made, it will be our third moon - discovered in 1986 was Cruithne.

UPDATE: It is space junk after all.

The Barbie drug: a pill or nasal spray that can make you thin, tan, pain-free, and horny all at once, without effort!

T-Ray Cameras: See through clothes!

Drink the same beer that the ancient Egyptians drank!

Researchers studying global warming have often been confounded by the differences between observed increases in surface-level temperatures and unchanging low-atmosphere temperatures.

A study in the July 2002 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics, published by the American Geophysical Union, proposes for the first time that interstellar cosmic rays could be the missing link between the discordant temperatures observed during the last two decades ...indications of Earth's warming have coincided with decreased cosmic ray intensity during the 20th century.

"The fossilized remains of giant lions and other ferocious monsters... A wombat — a burrowing, pig-like marsupial that carries its young in a pouch — the size of a mini car and the world's largest kangaroo [10 feet tall] were among the creatures unearthed in caves on the Nullarbor Plain, the vast desert stretching from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to South Australia's Gawler Ranges."

The article says that the fossils are "believed to be around 1.5 million years old", even though they are still waiting for dating test results, and the arrival of humans 60,000 years ago is offered as one reason for their extinction.

Like many other "bone caves" around the world, we have a bunch of creatures that would never hang out together, all dying at the same time in a mysterious way. Sheltering from a cataclysm is a reasonable possibility for why they were together.

The article is subititled "An Introductory Survey", suggesting that author (Michael S. Heiser, working on his PhD at the Dept. of Hebrew and Semitic Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is only scratching the surface.

It looks into some dubious ancient Sumerian translations of Sitchin's own making,

It's all beyond me, but Sitchin's lack of orthodox references in his books has always bothered me - along with the "we are descended from alien lizards" theme.

Yep, although they don't have any actual mammoths yet, they are planning a park to put them in - in Siberia.

"Those behind the planned park are already populating the site in north-east Siberia with other species from the Ice Age in hopeful anticipation of the mammoth's arrival.

There are currently hundreds of wild horses and musk ox grazing the land by the River Kolyma, and talks to import bison from Canada are already underway."

Giant airbags could one day save the world from the disaster of a cosmic collision with a giant comet, according to Hermann Burchard of Oklahoma State University.

"... send up a space ship equipped with a massive airbag that could be inflated to several miles wide and used to gently buffet the invading solar body away from a collision course with earth."

"However, he admitted there were still numerous details to be worked out including the material for the airbag which had to be light enough to cart into space yet strong enough to bounce the comet off its course to earth."

They are finding bigger species of long-dead ichthyosaurs

...length at 23 metres. The skull alone was 5.8 m long, and each broad, tapered flipper was 5.3 m long. The largest of the creature's hockey-puck-shaped vertebrae is 27 cm across... Isolated fossil vertebrae of other animals from the same species, taken from this site and others in British Columbia, are 36 cm across, meaning it was a minimum of 30 metres in length.

... the ichthyosaur was an ambush predator, lunging at its meals as they swam past...

Took them long enough - too many years of wondering what is still hidden within the Great Pyramid

Since when have these characters opened a tomb etc for the first time, live in front of the world. If they have a robot that can peek under the door, they will have given it a test run. They already know what is behind the door. For all we know, they have opened the door, and swapped what was there with something shiny to please the tv viewers.

Ever since the beginning of the Space Age, scientists have known that our planet is not round, but spherical with a slight bulge at the equator - it is 0.3% wider than it is high.

But now that bulge is rapidly getting bigger, even though it was slimming up until 1998.

This could very very very likely be connected to an upcoming magnetic pole flip.

Ever since it surfaced in 1957, the Vinland Map has been controversial. Id authentic, it proves that Vikings found North America before Christopher Columbus. Others argue that it is instead the work of a 20th-century counterfeiter.

Now the results of two new studies are adding further fuel to the debate. A report published in the journal Analytical Chemistry concludes that the map's ink has modern roots; researchers writing in the August issue of the journal Radiocarbon, on the other hand, say that the parchment dates back to 1434.

Archaeology Magazine has an extensive feature article on this ancient Inka site, with lots of pics and info.

This is new to me - many species that survive global catastrophes consequently become extinct. Scientists aren't sure why....

Perhaps it is mutations that didn't work out?

But not this one...

Growing numbers of geologists now believe that Marble Canyon and the Inner Gorge may be no more than 700,000 years old -- veritable infants on the geologic time scale, and much younger than the earlier 3-million- to 5-million-year-old estimates. Some scientists now believe that a third of the canyon's depth may have been cut in the blink of a geologic eye -- perhaps during the past 600,000 to 700,000 years.

As time goes on, catastrophism is becoming more, and more, and more accepted...

"Large sustained floods can cause rapid downcutting in bedrock"

The naked mole-rat is an odd beast. With its bare, pink skin and huge protruding incisors, this East African rodent is sometimes described as a hot dog with teeth.

It spends most of its time in dark tunnels, so its vision is limited, but it can navigate both forward and backward with ease, aided by sensory hairs at either end. Socially, it is strange, too: with a single breeding queen supported by scores of workers, a mole-rat colony is the mammalian equivalent of a beehive.

This is because the mole-rat uses its teeth to eat, dig, move objects and communicate.

New analytical techniques have found cocoa residues in 2600 year-old ceramic vessels from the town of Colha in what is now northern Belize. The previous earliest evidence for chocolate consumption dates from around AD 400.

Linda Moulton Howe presents an interview with Paulina Zelitsky, Ocean Engineer, Advanced Digital Communications.

The Earth could be about to turn upside down. The planet's magnetic field is showing signs of wanting to make a gigantic somersault, so that magnetic north heads towards Antarctica, and magnetic south goes north. Compasses will point the wrong way, and migrating birds, fish and turtles are going to be very confused. Just when this will happen, how long it will take and what the consequences will be, is difficult to fathom. What is not in doubt, though, is that it will happen. About every half a million years or so, the Earth's magnetic field flips upside down.

Two overviews related to the evidence found in April, that the magnetic pole reversal had begun.