Two 400-million-year-old fossil plants are the oldest known examples of wood. They are small herbs, suggesting that wood did not evolve to help plants grow tall.

Archaeologists say they have discovered ‘a recreation of the underworld’ at the ancient city of Teotihuacan in Mexico thanks to a radar device.

The tunnel, which is 13 metres below the ground, was originally discovered by chance in 2003 after heavy rains seeped into a tiny hole in the ground. No monarch’s tomb has ever been found at the site near Mexico City.

A giant ant growing over 5cm (2in) long crossed the Arctic during hot periods in the Earth’s history, scientists say, using land bridges between continents.

Little is known about how these ants lived or what they ate – but wings are present on the fossils. They are found, in Europe and now in Wyoming.

Nice to see us Britons getting a first… shame it’s such a gruesome one though! Mind you, what we perceive as gruesome now, might well have been the norm back then?

Bones excavated from caves in southwest England include the oldest known examples of drinking cups or containers made out of human skulls, says a team led by paleontologist Silvia Bello of the Natural History Museum in London.

Dr. Zahi Hawass has confirmed the staff of the database department at the Egyptian Museum, Cairo have discovered objects are missing from the museum.

An investigation has begun to search for the people who have taken these objects, and the police and army plan to follow up with the criminals already in custody.

Amid the continuing chaos in Egypt, it has emerged that would-be looters broke into Cairo’s famed Egyptian Museum, ripped the heads off two mummies and damaged around 75 small artifacts before being caught and detained by army soldiers, Egypt’s antiquities chief said Saturday (29th January 2011).

Egyptian army soldiers have also taken up position in front of the Giza pyramids.

Well, not sure where 2010 has gone!?
Below is a round up of the 10 most viewed posts on Cryptoworld over the last year. Interestingly, UFOs and Thylacines are still hot topics — what will be hot for 2011?

Archaeologists in Spain have unearthed the remains of 12 Neanderthals (possibly a family) who were killed 49,000 years ago. Their end appears to have been a bloody one, with markings on the bones showing the unmistakeable signs of cannibal activity. The remains were found in a cave in the Asturias region of Northern Spain. Details of the find appear in proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although the highly fragmented bones of six adults [...]

A giant marabou stork has been discovered on an island once home to human-like ‘hobbits’. Fossils of the bird were discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, a place previously famed for the discovery of Homo floresiensis, a small hominin species closely related to modern humans. The stork may have been capable of hunting and eating juvenile members of this hominin species, say researchers who made the discovery, though there is no direct evidence the [...]

A cast is being made of tracks left by a two-metre long ancient animal in north east Fife. The tracks were made by a giant six-legged “sea scorpion” called Hibbertopterus as it crawled over damp sand about 330 million years ago. It is the largest known walking trackway of a eurypterid or any invertebrate animal. The tracks were discovered by Dr Martin Whyte from the University of Sheffield while he was out walking. Scottish Natural [...]