Mystery

A mysterious, 41-foot by 19-foot (12.4-meter by 5.4-meter) gelatinous mass of flesh that washed ashore in southern Chile this June came from a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), not a giant octopus (Octopus giganteus) as some sleuths suspected.

“Two independent DNA analyses confirmed the identification as belonging to a sperm whale,” said Elsa Cabrera, director of the Center for Cetacean Conservation in Santiago, Chile.

The giant rock art murals that grace the walls of hundreds of shelters and caves found in the hardscrabble hills of the high sierra in Baja California Sur, Mexico, date back as far as 7,500 years ago, according to data from an ongoing study of the area.

The ancient dates for the paintings cast little light on the mystery of who made them and why, but it suggests that whoever the painters were they came well before the Aztecs established their culture in central Mexico in the 12th century A.D.

A mysterious, 41-foot-long and 19-foot-wide (12.4-meters by 5.4-meters)gelatinous mass of flesh washed ashore in southern Chile serves as reminder that the sea may be full of creatures yet discovered by humankind.

The creature was first thought to be a dead whale when it appeared last week on the coast near the town of Puerto Montt, but scientists who went to inspect the creature determined it was an invertebrate, or spineless, creature.

A mysterious group of apes found in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa has scientists and conservationist scratching their heads. The apes nest on the ground like gorillas but have a diet and features characteristic of chimpanzees.

The apes are most likely a group of giant chimpanzees that display gorilla-like behavior. A far more remote possibility is that they represent a new subspecies of great ape. Researchers plan to return to the region later this month to collect more clues to help resolve the mystery.

A six to seven million-year-old skull from northern Chad that shook the world when its discovery was announced this July may not be what its discoverers’ believe it to be: the oldest known member of the human family. “It is an ape and not a human ancestor,” said Milford Wolpoff, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

But the lead scientist who discovered the skull, Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers in France, stands by his theory that the fossil is a hominid.

Coral reefs are the rain forests of the oceans, teeming with a biological diversity that boggles the mind. Just how did such profusion of life come to thrive in crystal-clear—and thus nutrient poor—water? The question has eluded scientists since Charles Darwin took his famous voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle in the 1830s.

Now, a team of German and Jordanian researchers may have the answer to this so-called coral reef paradox: an abundance of sponges that dwell inside the nooks and crannies of reef interiors.