Eyeless Creature Discovered in Undersea Tunnel

A previously unknown species of an eyeless crustacean was discovered lurking inside a lava tube beneath the seafloor.
The creature, named Speleonectes atlantida, lives in the Tunnel de la Atlantida, the world's longest submarine lava tube on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands off the western coast of northern Africa. The discovery, which has implications for the evolution of an ancient group of crustaceans, will be detailed in September in a special issue of the journal Marine Biodiversity.
While in the cave, the international team of scientists and cave divers also discovered two previously unknown species of annelid worms.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090825/sc_livescience/eyelesscreaturediscoveredinunderseatunnel

Both the creatures and the tubes under the sea are interesting from an RPG point of view.

Giant 'meat-eating' plant found

A new species of giant carnivorous plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines.

The pitcher plant is among the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.

During the same expedition, botanists also came across strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms they could not identify.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8195000/8195029.stm

Two Worlds Collide in Deep Space

Two distant planets orbiting a young star apparently smashed into each other at high speeds thousands of years ago in a cosmic pileup of cataclysmic proportions, astronomers announced Monday.

Telltale plumes of vaporized rock and lava leftover from the collision revealed its existence to NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which picked up signatures from the impact in recent observations.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090810-planet-smash.html

Northwest dirt seeking giant worm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090711/ap_on_sc/us_giant_palouse_earthworm

MOSCOW, Idaho – The giant Palouse earthworm has taken on mythic qualities in this vast agricultural region that stretches from eastern Washington into the Idaho panhandle — its very name evoking the fictional sandworms from "Dune" or those vicious creatures from the movie "Tremors."

The worm is said to secrete a lily-like smell when handled, spit at predators, and live in burrows 15 feet deep. There have been only a handful of sightings.

But scientists hope to change that this summer with researchers scouring the Palouse region in hopes of finding more of the giant earthworms. Conservationists also want the Obama administration to protect the worm as an endangered species, even though little research has been done on it.

Converting Classic to GURPS Traveller Characters

http://www.mu.org/~joe/traveller/archive/GURPS/TravellerIII.txt
http://www.mu.org/~joe/traveller/archive/GURPS/TravellerI.txt
and don't forget the GURPS Traveller rules!

The first Europeans were cannibals: archaeologists

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090624/ts_afp/spainarchaeology

ATAPUERCA, Spain (AFP) – The remains of the "first Europeans" discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain have revealed that these prehistoric men were cannibals who particularly liked the flesh of children.

"We know that they practiced cannibalism," said Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, one of the co-directors of the Atapuerca project, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents.

Die Roll Probabilities in Traveller

http://www.travellercentral.com/rules/dice.html