Burial Ground Found in the Sahara

Amid the excitement of the Olympic games and the violence in Georgia and Iraq, you may have missed this bit of intriguing news.  A burial ground is found in the most desolate part of the Sahara desert, indicating a time when the Sahara was lush and green and wet.  The pictures of the fossils recovered are breathtaking and the implications and evidence they produce about the people that settled here and what their environment was is mind-blowing.

It reminds us how little we know about the planet we live on, and makes us wonder how many more surprises are in store.

Oh BTW, THERE WAS WATER ON MARS!

In what has to be the most underplayed scientific story of the decade, NASA found water on Mars last week. ThinkPop, was not yet fully operational, but I would be remiss even now if I didn’t mention it on the blog. Here’s a summary from Reuter’s

The proof of water on Mars only sparks the imagination that there could have once been life on the Red planet. It was under-reported because a monumental discovery like this one is often not dramatic enough. Ice chunks simply vaporized in the martian air. No little green men, no explosions, just a quiet natural reaction, that has changed what we know about our solar system forever.