478-carat diamond discovered at mine in Lesotho Bloomberg News Monday, September 22nd 2008, 12:13 PM handout This diamond is almost 500 carats and may be worth more than $45,000. Gem Diamonds Ltd., a miner of the precious stones in Africa, said the world's 20th-largest rough diamond was discovered at its Letseng mine in Lesotho. Gem found [...]

Written by Gavin HudsonScientists at the University of Melbourne have discovered the relics of a 650 million year-old reef in the Australian Outback. The reef is 10 ... 150 million years and the first mammals by about 450 million years. The reef itself, the only one of its age ever discovered, is not composed of coral like today's reefs. Most of the reef is made of layers of non-living stromatolite ...

CNN reported yesterday that a honking big diamond was discovered at the Letseng Mine in the Kingdom of Lesotho. The gargantuan gem is 478 carats and a D color, the "highest possible graded color you can get," says diamond consultants. The article reminded me of Tom Zoellner's excellent 2006 nonfiction book The Heartless Stone: A Journey [...]

... 'em out, and tell 'em Mo sent ya. Angelika Mama Flo's Place First Door On The Left The Movie Fanatic As It Stands Tinkerbell Foster Me Big Brother Insider Steven Humor Of Cats The Junk Drawer Lil' Blog Of Horrors n*tranced Of course, as I did this post, I found at least another 13 great blogs that I have discovered through Entrecard, so I'll have to do another T13 on this topic in the future!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 By Andrea Thompson [Ants evolved more than 120 million years ago] —A newly discovered species of a blind, subterranean predator — dubbed the "Ant from Mars"  is likely a descendant of one of the very first ants to evolve on Earth, a new study finds. Christian Rabeling, an evolutionary biology graduate student at the University [...]

As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered. Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow." The stuff ...