"Exploring Lava Lakes and Moon Chunks: This Week's Science Highlights"
Originally Published 2 years ago — by Livescience.com
This week in science news, researchers confirmed the existence of the world's eighth lava lake on an uninhabited island near Antarctica, while a mysterious chunk of the moon was discovered orbiting near Earth. Other notable discoveries include highly pathogenic bird flu in Antarctica, the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, a world-class aquifer in the Sahara, and the genetic linking of living people with stolen African skulls. Scientists also found that an asteroid closely orbiting Earth could be a moon chunk, and space junk may be affecting Earth's upper atmosphere. In the animal kingdom, stories included a terrifying Jurassic "megapredator," fossils of the largest-ever marsupial, and the evolution of caterpillar prolegs.