50 Most beautiful Places Visited in lifetime

This list contains several surprises. Since the Taj Mahal ranks on fiftieth and final place with 2.4 million visitors a year, several popular favorites like the the Prado (2 million), the Uffizi (1.6 million), Angkor (1.5 million) and Stonehenge (850,000) didn’t appear in the list. And while Western audiences may not be familiar with names like Everland and Lotte World, these South Korean mega-parks managed to rank 16th and 22nd on our list, respectively.

Not surprisingly, the French are out in force. How to account for the preponderance of attractions in Paris? According to the latest statistics report from the World Tourism Organization, France receives more foreign tourists per year than some 76 million tourists peryear. Spain followed with 55 million, the United States with 50 million and China with 47 million. Italy rounded out the top five with 37 million.

We excluded religious pilgrimage sites, such as Saudi Arabia’s Mecca, India’s Varanasi, and Tokyo’s Sensoji Temple, which according to the Japan Tourism Authority receives over 30 million visitors each year. We chose to include some famous churches in Paris owing to their status as cultural attractions and the high numbers of foreign tourists they receive. St. Peter’s Square straddled the line, but there are no estimates for tourist traffic versus religious attendance, so we included only visitors to the Vatican museums.
Also giving us some interesting facts like:

1. Americans love to travel, but they prefer to stick within their own borders.

2. Wherever Mickey Mouse goes, he conquers.

3. Paris is the unofficial cultural theme park of the world.

4. Niagara Falls isn’t just for lovers anymore.

So who’ #1? The Eiffel tower? The Grand Canyon? The Great Wall? The Pyramids of Giza? Answer: none of the above.
Enjoy the list:

50. Taj Mahal, Agra, India | 2.4 Million

The one and only. The most romantic building in the world, the Taj was built by 17th-century emperor Shajahan who married the 14-year-old Arjumand Banu (whose beauty was already legendary). She bore him 14 sons and died in childbirth.

49. Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia | 2.5 Million

Peter the Great’s “Russian Versailles” is now one of the world’s greatest art collections. Last year the museum weathered a break-in that cost over $500,000 in lost art, but recent international ventures, including a permanent exhibit in Las Vegas, have proved popular.

48. Pompeii, Italy | 2.5 Million

After Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., most of the citizens of Pompeii got out, and the rest became exhibits. All of the ancient town is yet to be uncovered, and the ruins of nearby Herculaneum also draw visitors.

47. Pyramids of Giza, Egypt | 3 Million

One in three visitors to Egypt visit the pyramids, but only 300 are allowed inside the structures per day. Alas, the only extant wonder of the ancient world was recently barred from competing in a web contest to name the modern seven wonders.

46. Yosemite National Park, Calif. | 3.44 Million

During peak season, the Yosemite Valley can feel downright congested, because it is. The shuttle bus system is a start, but there have been more and more calls to eliminate automobiles from the main loop altogether. In the meantime, a new $1.3-million visitor center features all manner of interactive exhibits for the kids.

45. Palace of Versailles, France | 3.45 Million

Once the seat of the French monarchy and now a dazzling repository of mirrors, chandeliers and decadence in a tony Parisian suburb, the Palace of Versailles continues to be a huge attraction. Some recent publicity has helped—last year the French government made a rare concession in allowing Sofia Coppola to film “Marie Antoinette” on the palace grounds.

44. The London Eye, London, England | 3.5 Million

Opened by Tony Blair on New Year’s Eve, 1999, one of the world’s largest observation wheels was originally intended to last only five years. Now owned by Tussauds (and sponsored by British Airways), the Eye is one of London’s biggest tourist draws. The Millennium Dome wasn’t so fortunate.

43. Natural History Museum, London, England | 3.7 Million

The stately Museum of Natural History has been delighting Londoners since 1881. Featured attractions include the bones of a whale that accidentally swam up the Thames, a giant squid named Archie and several specimens collected by Mr. Darwin himself.

42. Empire State Building, New York, NY | 4 Million

New York’s own Eiffel Tower is the world’s most iconic skyscraper, but its visitor count only includes those visitors who pay admission to take the elevators up. As for all those who contemplate the New York skyline, or who crane their necks to look skyward at Fifth Avenue and 34th, who’s counting, pal?

41. Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Hollywood, Calif. | 4 Million

This is still Hollywood’s main attraction, where Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks began the tradition of hand- and shoeprints in wet cement. It’s also Another figure hard to pin down, but the theater claims that 4 million star seekers visit each year.

40. American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY | 4 Million

Dinosaurs and mastodons do not roam freely at night, despite Hollywood’s claims, but this seat of countless school field trips remains one of New York’s chief attractions.

39. The Coliseum, Rome, Italy | 4 Million

The number of tourists visiting this relic of the world’s greatest empire is largely estimated from tour statistics. Add an uncounted number for those visitors leaning over to look at the ruined temples or wandering to the nearby Forum, and the ranking goes up. But, like our Latin, this number is all we know for sure.

38. Sydney Opera House, Sydney, Australia | More than 4 Million

Australia’s only appearance is its famous gull-wing opera house. If this seems surprising in the land of “Hey, mate” and “shrimp-on-the barbie,” remember that one of the world’s most gifted opera singers, Joan Sutherland, is an Aussie.

37. The Vatican and its museums, Rome, Italy | 4.2 Million

This number reflects those visiting the Vatican itself, not the pilgrims who gather in St. Peter’s Square. Since this list does not count religious shrines as tourist attractions, it’s impossible to measure its tourist-only numbers. It’s fair to say that if there were reliable figures for places like Tiananmen Square and perhaps Moscow’s Red Square, all three would rank higher on this list.

36. Statue of Liberty, New York, NY | 4.24 Million

France’s gift to the U.S., beckoning the world’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free, its visitors are counted as those actually visiting Liberty Island. Those gazing, dreaming, or just cruising past, are without number.

35. SeaWorld California, San Diego, Calif. | 4.26 Million

Owned by Anheuser-Busch, the original SeaWorld San Diego was founded in 1964 by four UCLA grads who initially wanted to open an underwater restaurant. The resort’s new “Shamu Rocks” show promises to combine “incredible images…with dazzling lighting effects, sizzling rock n’ roll music and amazing behaviors.” This is it for amusement parks, folks!

34. Busch Gardens Tampa Bay, Fla. | 4.36 Million

Just a couple more, folks: This one features tame African encounters in a zoo with more than 2,000 animals, plus the usual rides and attractions.

33. Ocean Park, Hong Kong, China | 4.38 Million

This not-for-profit amusement park at least has a noble purpose: education. The park’s research program produced the first successful pregnancy of a bottlenose dolphin through artificial insemination.

32. Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen, Denmark | 4.4 Million

Well, thankfully, an old, graceful and venerated amusement park: Founded in 1843, with gardens to die for, Denmark’s leading attraction boasts a wooden roller coaster and a huge, old-fashioned carousel.

31. Grand Canyon, Ariz. | 4.4 Million

Though there’s no pretense at counting the number of highway drivers who cruise past America’s most spectacular ditch, “official” visitors admitted to the park were the second highest in America for a natural attraction. Considerably fewer rode to the bottom on mules.

30. Metropolitan Museum, New York, NY | 4.5 Million

The dowager queen of U.S. museums boasts one of the world’s finest collections of Roman and Greek antiquities. But the old girl showed her hipness with a podcast of a Van Gogh show narrated by Kevin Bacon, which became a top-100 download.

29. National Gallery, London, England | 4.6 Million

This great London museum houses London’s most remarkable collection of Western European painting—from Leonardo’s Virgin on the Rocks to Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Monet’s Water Lilies.

28. Universal Studios Los Angeles, Calif. | 4.7 Million

Nope, not through yet: the good news is that it’s the last of the Universal theme parks. The bad news (for the sake of diversity on this list): Universal Studios is building another park in Singapore, to be completed by 2010.

27. British Museum, London, England | 4.8 Million

Second to the Tate by a hair, the venerable British Museum, free to the public since 1753, contains some of the world’s rarest antiquities such as the Rosetta Stone and the first known depiction of Christ.

26. Tate Modern, London, England | 4.9 Million

The Tate museums are collectively the UK’s biggest cultural draw. Perhaps surprisingly, the Tate Modern, the world’s greatest museum of international modern art, outpulls the older Tate Britain, which houses more traditional masterpieces. The Tate Liverpool and Tate St. Ives are also popular.

25. Centre Pompidou, Paris, France | 5.1 Million

The world’s most visited city makes its 6th and last appearance on this list. This "constraint-free" architectural wonder owes its popularity to its pipes-and-all look and to its collection of an estimated 53,000 modern and contemporary works.

24. Hong Kong Disneyland, China | 5.2 Million

Located on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island, this Magic Kingdom-style amusement empire is the latest and smallest Disneyland. The good news: It’s the last Disney on this list. The bad news: It has ambitious plans for expansion and someday will undoubtedly muscle out some other contender higher up on the list.

23. Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, Japan | 5.4 Million

Another amusement park, this is an island at the tip of Yokohama Bay, featuring one of the country’s largest marine life collections, an undersea tunnel, Japan’s first surf coaster and more.

22. Lotte World, Seoul, South Korea | 5.5 Million

And again! The world’s largest indoor theme park and South Korea’s most visited attraction, Lotte World sold 5.5 million tickets in 2006. But here’s the thing: It closed in January, so go figure.

21. Pleasure Beach, Blackpool, England | 5.7 Million

Pleasure Beach, a Coney Island-style amusement park since 1896, is the big draw in paid attendance in Great Britain. Although the recently constructed London Eye claims to be the big wheel in U.K. paid attendance, we count Pleasure Beach considerably ahead.

20. SeaWorld Florida, Orlando, Fla | 5.74 Million

Yes, Shamu, there’s still more in Orlando (and no, this isn’t the end of it): The aquatic corral and performing arts center for whales and dolphins is yet another huge Orlando draw. (In fact, some say the entire city of Orlando will eventually become a huge, Medusa-like theme park and blow away the rest of the competition on this list.)

19. Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando, Fla | 6 Million

Again, no figures on duplication of visitors, but the number of screamers at Universal Studio’s “Fear Factor Live” and screechers at companion Islands of Adventure’s “psychological thrill rides,” are similar. This double TV-themed park adds luster to Orlando’s queen-of-the-themes crown.

18. Eiffel Tower, Paris, France | 6.7 Million

Some think this is the world’s most visited tourist attraction, but with an official count of 6.7 million paid visitors in 2006, it doesn’t even reach France’s top three in the rankings. Still, give it this: considering that France is Europe’s most popular tourist destination, and that every visitor to Paris gazes at the Eiffel Tower, it has a distinction beyond the number of paid visitors to the top. Mr. Eiffel’s iron masterpiece is arguably the world’s most famous monument.

17. The Forbidden City/Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China | At least 7 Million

Another tough one to rank. Published sources estimate the number of visitors to Beijing’s former imperial palace, set in Tiananmen Square. However, no figures are available for the tourist foot traffic in the square, nor is it clear how many are visitors and how many are residents. In any case, the Forbidden City is the area’s chief attraction. What is measurable is that China’s once-paltry tourism is gaining fast, like everything else about the world’s most populous nation.

16. Everland, Kyonggi-Do, South Korea | 7.5 Million

Neck and neck with the Louvre in the 14th spot is yes, another amusement park—this one South Korea’s largest, with 7.5 million visitors in 2006. Part of the Everland Resort (whose unreported overall numbers might have pushed it higher on the list), this Disney lookalike is surrounded by a water park and Korea’s first theme zoo.

15. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France | 7.5 Million

A museum since 1793, this cradle of French history has been everything from a fortress to several kings’ residences, and today is crowned with I.M Pei’s modern shimmering glass pyramid at its entrance. It is the world’s most visited museum, though there have been some oil-rich rumbles that a planned Louvre in Abu Dhabi will go for the gold when it opens in 2012.

14. Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre, Paris, France | 8 Million

The basilica on a hill overlooking the roofs of Paris shares its neighborhood with the once-naughty Pigalle district. Though we’re not counting purely religious centers in this list, Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur make it because their visitors are overwhelmingly tourists.

13. Universal Studios Japan, Osaka, Japan | 8.5 Million

The most visited of Universal’s three studio parks worldwide, it plays host to almost 9 million Japanese Hollywood fans, cementing Japan’s third-place finish in the global tourist-attraction sweepstakes (after the U.S. and France).

12. The Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Tennessee/North Carolina | 9.2 Million

America’s most visited national park is neither the Grand Canyon, which barely makes it on this list (as measured by visitors at the main entrances), nor Yosemite. With more than 800 miles of protected trails, this natural wonder hosted nearly 10 million people.

11. The Great Wall of China, Badaling area, China | 10 Million

Whether or not it can be seen from outer space, the 4,163-mile-long wall is the world’s longest man-made structure. Though it’s beginning to crumble from the ever-increasing crowds, Badaling, the wall’s most popular strip, welcomes 10 million visitors a year.

10. Disneyland Paris, Marne-La-Vallee, France | 10.6 Million

Formerly Euro Disney, this French amusement park is well past its struggling early years. With 10,600,000 visitors in 2006, Disneyland Paris is France’s second most visited tourist attraction.

9. Notre Dame de Paris, Paris, France | 12 Million

The world’s most familiar Gothic cathedral is France’s main attraction (and not Disney Paris, reputed to be Europe’s top draw). The number of visitors is carefully noted by the Parisian tourist association, and reputedly does not include a certain Victor Hugo back-challenged character.

8. Tokyo Disneyland/DisneySea, Tokyo, Japan | 12.9 Million

Continuing the Disney rout, the first of its parks to have opened outside the U.S.in 1983, the Tokyo Disney Resort includes both the hugely popular Disneyland and its waterworld partner, DisneySea. Again, no firm numbers on attendance duplication, but a trade publication puts the figure at a pretty specific 12.9 million.

7. Fisherman’s Wharf/Golden Gate National Recreation Area, San Francisco, Calif | 13 Million

Approximately 13 million annual visitors to the heart of San Francisco, its legendary soaring bridge and surrounding park, plus its bustling fish-and-chowder pier, helping to account for the city’s worldwide appeal. (San Francisco is usually cited as the first or second U.S. city foreigners say they want to visit.) Our figures come from the fact that 14.6 million visitors visit SF per year, and almost all show up at the wharf and the bridge.

6. Niagara Falls, Ontario and New York | 14 Million

It might not be the tallest of its kind (Venezuela’s Angel Falls are the world’s highest at 3,212 ft.), but this tumbler’s location straddling two countries, breathtaking views and of course the romance and honeymoon factor account for nearly 14 million visitors every year.

5. Disneyland Park, Anaheim, Calif. | 14.7 Million

Open since 1955, the grand dame of the Disney parks continues to be the top tourist attraction draw in California, even though it occupies a much smaller area than its Florida sister. Almost all the international Disney parks dominate the country in which they’re located.

4. Trafalgar Square, London, England | 15 Million

Lord Nelson and the British Navy defeated a combined French and Spanish force in 1805, and a grateful country built a splendid public square to commemorate the occasion. Now a popular spot for demonstrations, concerts and New Year's Eve celebrations, Trafalgar Square feeds popular attractions like the National Gallery. Note: This is an estimated figure from the Greater London Authority extrapolated from pedestrian counts.

3. Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Lake Buena Vista | 16.6 Million

Florida’s most popular attraction opened on October 1, 1971—16 years after the birth of its older sister, Disneyland, in Anaheim, Calif. Disney doesn’t release attendance figures for its parks, however the TEA/ERA Theme Park Attendance Report confirms that the Magic Kingdom is the most popular of its Florida attractions, followed by Epcot, Disney MGM Studios and Animal Kingdom. A cumulative figure (ie. total number of people who visited the Disney World theme parks) would likely not alter the Mouse’s ranking.

2. National Mall, Memorial Parks, Washington, D.C. | About 25 Million

The nation’s premier national park and its monuments and memorials attract more visitors than such vast national parks as the Great Smoky Mountains, Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Yellowstone -- combined. The nearby Smithsonian museums of Natural History and Air & Space welcome more than about 5 million visitors apiece.

1. Times Square, New York City, NY | 35 Million

An estimated 80 percent of the Big Apple’s 44 million visitors head for Broadway (including the considerable theater crowds) and end up gawking at the world’s most garish neon crossroads.

Tags: 50 beautiful picture, beautiful Places, Travel in lifetime, Taj Mahal, Pompeii, Italy, Hermitage Museum, London Eye, Empire State Building

Missing link between man and apes found in South Africa

Homo habilis lived 2.0-1.6 million years ago and had
a wide distribution in Africa Photo: SPL

In a find that could rewrite the history of human evolution, palaeontologists claim to have found the "missing link" between humans and their apelike ancestors.

An international team has found a two-million-year-old skeleton of a child, which it claims belongs to a new species of hominid that may have been an intermediate stage as apemen evolved into advanced humans known as Homo habilis.

According to the palaeontologists, the skeleton shares characteristics with Homo habilis, whose emergence 2.5 million years ago is seen as a key stage in the evolution of humans. The team, led by Lee Berger of the University of Witwatersrand, found the skeleton while exploring cave systems in the Sterkfontein region of South Africa, near Johannesburg, an area known as "the Cradle of Humanity".

Phillip Tobias, an eminent human anatomist and anthropologist at the university who was one of three experts to first identify Homo habilis as a new species of human in 1964, described the discovery as "wonderful" and "exciting".

"To find a skeleton as opposed to a couple of teeth or an arm bone is a rarity. It is one thing to find a lower jaw with a couple of teeth, but it is another thing to find the jaw joined onto the skull, and those in turn uniting further down with the spinal column, pelvis and the limb bones.



"It is not a single find, but several specimens representing several individuals. The remains now being brought to light by Dr Berger and his team are wonderful", the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.

The skeleton was found along with a number of other partially complete fossils, encased within breccia rock inside a limestone cave known as Malapa cave. Simon Underdown, an expert on human evolution, said the new finding could help scientists gain a better understanding of our evolutionary tree.

The discovery is the most important find from Sterkfontein since an almost-complete fossil of a 3.3-million- year-old Australopithecus, nicknamed Little Foot, was found in 1994.

Oriental Yeti discovered in China

This bizarre creature dubbed the oriental yeti has baffled scientists after
emerging from ancient woodlands in remote central China. Photo: CEN

Scientists will examine a mysterious creature captured in China that has been dubbed the "oriental yeti".

The hairless animal, which was trapped by hunters in Sichuan province in the country's remote central woodlands, will be shipped to Beijing for DNA tests amid speculation it is a mythical beast described in local legend.

"It looks a bit like a bear but it doesn't have any fur and it has a tail like a kangaroo," the Telegraph quoted hunter Lu Chin as saying.

"It also does not sound like a bear — it has a voice more like a cat and it is calling all the time — perhaps it is looking for the rest of its kind or maybe it's the last one?

"There are local legends of a bear that used to be a man and some people think that's what we caught."

It is hoped the DNA tests will shed light on the mystery beast.

Photo: CEN

New lizard species discovered in Philippines

A new giant species of monitor lizard has been discovered in the forests of the Northern Philippines, scientists have said.

The two-metre (6ft 6in) brightly coloured lizard is a secretive, fruit-eating species which was found in the forests of the heavily populated and largely deforested Luzon Island.

The discovery of the monitor lizard was described as an "unprecedented surprise" by scientists documenting the find in the Royal Society Biology Letters journal.

It has become rare to discover previously unknown species of larger animals, they said.

The species (Varanus bitatawa) is restricted to the forests of the central and northern Sierra Madre range, where biologists have conducted relatively few surveys of reptiles and amphibians.

Genetic tests revealed it was a different species from a closely related monitor lizard, from which it is geographically separated by three non-forested river valleys on the island.

The researchers suggested it was a highly secretive species which never left forests to cross open areas.

The scientists said the monitor lizards, which highlighted the "unexplored nature of the Philippines", could become a flagship species for conservation efforts to preserve the remaining forests of the region.

Seasons Discovered on Neptune's Moon Triton

Neptune's largest moon Triton undergoes seasonal variations just like the Earth and is presently experiencing summer in its southern hemisphere, astronomers have found.

In a first-ever infrared analysis of Triton's atmosphere with the help of ESO's Very Large Telescope, the researchers have found presence of frozen nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane on the moon’s thin surface which turn into gas as the southern hemisphere warms up by the Sun. The thin, icy atmosphere then thickens as the season advances during Neptune's 165-year orbit around the Sun.

“We have found real evidence that the Sun still makes its presence felt on Triton, even from so far away. This icy moon actually has seasons just as we do on Earth, but they change far more slowly,” said Emmanuel Lellouch, lead author of the paper reporting the results in Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

The average surface temperature of Triton is about -235 degree Celsius and a season in the moon lasts a little over 40 years. While it is summer in its southern hemisphere, the northern hemisphere is witnessing winter.

While carbon monoxide was known to be present as ice on Triton's surface, the researchers' team has now found that the moon's upper surface layer is enriched with carbon monoxide ice by about a factor of ten compared to the deeper layers, and that it is this upper “film” that feeds the atmosphere. While the majority of Triton’s atmosphere is nitrogen, much like on Earth, the methane in its atmosphere, first detected by Voyager 2, and only now confirmed in this study from Earth, plays an important role as well.

"Climate and atmospheric models of Triton have to be revisited now, now that we have found carbon monoxide and re-measured the methane," said co-author Catherine de Bergh.

Triton is Neptune's largest of 13 moons and is the seventh largest moon in the Solar System. The moon has fascinated astronomers due to its geologic activity, presence of different types of surface ice, such as frozen nitrogen as well as water and dry ice. Its unique retrograde motion, i.e, a motion in the opposite direction to its planet's rotation, has also caused curiosity among researchers.

Moa bones and adze head find may date to 1400s

Moa bones and a Maori adze head are discovered on an historic building site on Auckland's North Shore. Photo / NZPA
A highly significant archaeological find including Moa bones and a Maori adze head has been discovered on an historic building site on Auckland's North Shore.

The bones and adze head were uncovered at Torpedo Bay, Devonport, where a new navy museum is being developed and due to open in August.

On a scale of one to 10 the find rated as a 10 for its historic value, an archaeologist with Opus International Consultants Limited, the principal design consultants for the museum project Mica Plowman told NZPA.

The find was thought to be more than 500 years old, possibly dating back to the 1400s.

The adze head and bones of the large, flightless and now extinct moa were found in a large fire pit.

The bones were part of a bird which was killed, cooked and eaten by Maori, Ms Plowman said.

The find was hugely significant because "first-settlement sites" were very rare and few had been excavated in Auckland.

Where the bones were found in the cooking pit indicated they had been discarded, indicating those who had eaten the bird had not been worried about running out of moa bones, highly useful for carving and working into items for everyday life.

Moa were believed to have become extinct in New Zealand about 500 years ago. They grew to about four metres tall and were heavily hunted by Maori, leading to their eventual extinction.

The site was found during work to renovate old defence buildings in Torpedo Bay, an historic part of Devonport and the site of a navy base since 1866.

Torpedo Bay was used in the late 1800s as a submarine mining station to defend Auckland against a possible invasion from the Imperial Russian Fleet. The mines spanned the harbour entrance and could be detonated from the shore if an enemy ship came up the harbour to attack.

It was also the base for the spar torpedo boats which were fitted with a long spar with an attached warhead and used to ram enemy ships. The boats were never used in conflict in New Zealand. They were highly unstable and considered to be more dangerous for the crew than for enemy ships.

Ms Plowman said the historic site was about 50 metre back from the harbour but when Maori used it, the site would have been on the water's edge.

It was a rare, exciting and very significant find, she said.

Early settlement sites were rare because they were often beach front sites which did not survive.

"Moa bones were a very valuable commodity in early Maori society. It was a robust large bone which enabled them to make large fish hooks and things out of it."

Historians say Torpedo Bay had many layers of history from the early days of Maori settlement in Auckland.

Kupe, the great Maori navigator, was thought to have landed his canoe in the bay about 900AD and named it Te Hau Kapua (cloud bank carried along by the wind).

Later one of the great `seven canoe' fleet commanded by Chief Hoturoa landed the Tainui people who were thought to have named a spring in the area `Takapuna', which later came to refer to the surrounding area.

In 1917, during World War 1, German Captain Felix Graf von Luckner was held prisoner at Torpedo Bay before being transferred to the island prison at Motuihe in the Hauraki Gulf.

The cell in the cliff where von Luckner was held still existed and would be part of the new navy museum's outside exhibits.

Fossil Found May Be Rare Dinosaur

Mountain Range H.S. Science Teacher May Have Found 'Ankylosaurid' Skull.

A Mountain Range High School science teacher with a hobby for paleontology has discovered what federal authorities said could be the first skull fragment from a rare dinosaur.

Kent Hups, a teacher at Westminster's Mountain Range High School, discovered the fossil in the Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area in western Colorado.

Tests are pending, but the Bureau of Land Management said Saturday that the fragment appears to be the first from an armadillo-like dinosaur called the Ankylosaurid. The bone fragment is embedded in a rock weighing more than 100 pounds.

"It took 10 hours to get it out with a rock saw," Hups said. "It was exhausting work."

Hups digs for dinosaur fossils under a BLM paleontological use permit. The teacher has findings displayed in two Colorado science museums. In 2008, Hups found a perfectly preserved footprint of an Ankylosaurid.

"As the crow flies, this (skull) was about 1 1/2 miles from we found the print,"Hups said.

Hups said if the skull fragment is confirmed as an Ankylosaurid, it would be the first fossil of its kind from that dinosaur. However Hups is tentative to claim anything yet. He said it could take a year or longer before the specimen is properly identified.

The fossil will be brought to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for analysis.

"We knew what kind of dinosaur it is based upon of the material we’ve pulled out before," Hups said. "We've got stuff that people have never seen before. We have stuff that is articulated, meaning it is how it was found in life.

"It is definitely something very unique and very different."

Fossil hunting brings many to western Colorado, and Grand Junction tourism officials are hoping the find sparks new interest in bone hunting.

Earthworms take group decisions, travel in herds

Contrary to the long-held belief that earthworms lack social behaviour, a new research has found the creatures, which play an important ecological role, use touch to communicate and take 'group decisions' to travel in the same direction as part of a single herd.

Researchers at University of Liege in Gembloux in Belgium, who have discovered this striking behaviour in the earthworm 'Eisenia fetida' for the first time, said a social cue influences earthworm behaviour "Our results modify the current view that earthworms are animals lacking in social behaviour," said researcher Lara Zirbes.

"We can consider the earthworm behaviour as equivalent that of a herd or swarm."

Zirbes and colleagues were originally interested in knowing how earthworms interact with other microorganisms in the soil.

However, they noticed that the earthworms formed herds to interact with each other.

"In experiments, I noticed that earthworms frequently clustered and formed a compact patch when they were out of the soil," Zirbes told the BBC.

The surprising behaviour fascinated the scientists to do more research as to how earthworms decided where to go, and whether they preferred to travel alone or in groups.

For their study, the researchers chose the earthworm Eisenia fetida, which tends to live near or at the soil surface, and carried out a series of experiments.

First, they placed 40 earthworms into a central chamber, from which extended two identical arms. The idea was to leave the animals alone, and then to see how many earthworms moved to either arm over a 24-hour period.

Over 30 identical repeats of the trial, the worms preferred to group within one chamber over the other.

"We noted that earthworms moving out of the central chamber influenced the directional choice of other earthworms.

"So our hypothesis was confirmed: a social cue influences earthworm behaviour," said Zirbes.

In another test, the researchers placed one worm at the start of a soil-filled maze, with two routes to a food source at the end.

After the worm chose its route to the food, the researchers added a second worm to see if it followed the same route as the first.

However, after repeated trials, the second worms were no more likely to take the same route as their predecessors. This indicated that the worms did not leave a chemical trail behind them that communicated their direction of travel.

Yet if two worms were placed together at the start of the maze, they were more likely to follow one another, suggesting that they used touch to communicate where they were going. In two-thirds of these trials, the worms followed each other.

"I have observed contact between two earthworms.

Sometimes they just cross their bodies and sometimes they maximise contact. Out of soil, earthworms can form balls," said Zirbes.

A modelling study then showed that, by using touch alone, up to 40 earthworms could follow each other in a similar way, explaining how herds of the animals preferred to move together into one chamber in the initial experiments.

"To our knowledge this is the first example of collective orientation in animals based on contact between followers," the researchers wrote in the journal Ethology.

Novel way to turn water into hydrogen fuel found

A team of MIT researchers has genetically modified a virus that can exploit sunlight to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.

Splitting water is one way to solve the basic problem of solar energy: It's only available when the sun shines.

By using sunlight to make hydrogen from water, the hydrogen can then be stored and used at any time to generate electricity using a fuel cell, or to make liquid fuels for cars and trucks.

Other researchers have made systems that use electricity, which can be provided by solar panels, to split water molecules, but the new biologically based system skips the intermediate steps and uses sunlight to power the reaction directly.

The team, led by Angela Belcher, the Germeshausen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biological Engineering, engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus called M13 so that it would attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins).

The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules.

The advance is described in a paper published on April 11 in Nature Nanotechnology.

Roman-era mummy found in Egyptian oasis

Egyptian archaeologists discovered an intricately carved plaster sarcophagus portraying a wide-eyed woman dressed in a tunic in a newly uncovered complex of tombs at a remote desert oasis, Egypt's antiquities department announced Monday.

It is the first Roman-style mummy found in Bahariya Oasis some 186 miles (300 kilometers) southwest of Cairo, said archaeologist Mahmoud Afifi, who led the dig. The find was part of a cemetery dating back to the Greco-Roman period containing 14 tombs.

"It is a unique find," he told The Associated Press, confirming that initial examinations indicate a mummy is inside the coffin.

The carved plaster sarcophagus is only 3 feet (1 meter) long and shows a woman wearing a long tunic, a headscarf, bracelet and shoes, as well as a beaded necklace. Colored stones in the sarcophagus' eyes gave the appearance she is awake.

Afifi said they had not dated the new find yet, but the burial style indicated she belonged to Egypt's long period of Roman rule lasting a few hundred years and starting 31 B.C.

He said his team first thought they had stumbled across a child's tomb because of its diminutive stature, but the decorations and features indicated it was a woman.

Afifi said it was still unclear who the woman was but said it was most likely she was a wealthy and influential member of her society, judging by the effort taken on the sarcophagus.

Mummies of people of diminutive stature have been unearthed in other parts of Egypt, where they appeared to have importance in local religions at the time, he added.

The archaeologists also found a gold relief showing the four sons of the Egyptian god Horus, other plaster masks of women's faces, several glass and clay utensils and some metal coins.

The metal coins are being checked to see whether they can date the era of the tomb more precisely.

Afifi said the find suggested the presence of a larger tomb complex, but said humid weather in the area may have destroyed similar sites.

He said none of the other 13 graves were as complete as that of the woman.

The find was made after archaeologists had made a series of exploratory digs ahead of a local council plan to build a youth center on the land. The area is known for its relics from the Greco-Roman period.

Bahariya Oasis rocketed to fame a decade ago with the discovery of the "Valley of the Golden Mummies," a vast cemetery that has yielded up hundreds of mummies, many covered in gold leaf, from the Greco-Roman period.

Those sarcophagi were decorated in a more traditional ancient Egyptian style, rather than the Roman style of the current find.

The discoveries from this period indicate the comparative wealth and prosperity of the oases at the time due to their location on major desert trading routes.

Scientists develop new method to detect mass graves

Canadian researchers have developed a new technique for detecting mass graves from the air, which they claim will help locate human remains years after the bodies have been disposed off.

Forensic experts at McGill University in Montreal have developed a technique, called hyperspectral imaging, which searches for signs of chemical changes in the vegetation growing on grave sites.

"From personal experience, I know it's possible to miss remains by a few centimetres, then realise it later and have to come back," says Andre Costopoulos, a member of the team which has used the technique for searching animal carcasses buried at Parc Safari in Quebec.

"Even quite substantial remains within an acre can be hard to find," Costopoulos says.

This method that analyses a range of visible and infrared wavelengths as it scans terrain from the air could prove useful to investigators looking for victims of war or genocide who have been buried in mass graves, New Scientist reported.

Cameras mounted on a light aircraft or helicopter detect variations in the intensity of light of various wavelengths reflected by vegetation on the ground. The precise pattern of intensities has been found to reflect changes caused by nutrients released into the soil as bodies decompose.

When searching for clandestine graves, investigators traditionally look for signs of disturbance on the ground, or dig small test trenches to identify the most likely area.

"Plants are living systems, and any changes in water content or the soil chemistry are going to affect how they reflect light," the team said.

The technique has great potential, says Ian Hanson, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Bournemouth, UK, who has investigated mass graves in Iraq and Bosnia.

"Some of these animals were buried around 20 years ago, so you could take new imagery over areas where bodies were buried 20, 30, 40 years ago and discover things that no one has ever been able to find before." This could be particularly useful in detecting older mass graves, he said.

A related method that is currently being developed by the FBI detects living humans and recently dead bodies lying on the ground, by recognising the chemical signature of human skin. It could be used when trying to locate and rescue people who are lost or missing and to track down fugitives.

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