Discoveries

A brilliant green tree frog with huge black eyes joins jumping spiders and a striped gecko among the more than 50 new animal species that scientists have discovered in a remote, mountainous region of Papua New Guinea. The discoveries were announced Wednesday by Conservation International, which spent the last several months analyzing more than 600 animal species the group found during its expedition to the South Pacific island nation in July and August.

These days, the sound of the digital scythe being whetted makes me cast more lingering looks at the paper and cardboard relics on my bookshelves. At none more, since the announcement in March of their imminent extinction, than the familiar brown and gold, oddly titled volumes of my 1958 Encyclopedia Britannica: HYDROZ to JEREM, MARYB to MUSHE, SARS to SORC. During my teenage years, when my thirst and respect for knowledge were at an unsustainable peak, I resolved to read the Britannica from one end to the other.

A 25-year-old Los Angeles man paralyzed from the waist down after being hit by a car in 2006 has regained the ability to stand, take steps on a treadmill and move his hips, knees, ankles and toes voluntarily as a result of an experimental treatment developed at UCLA and the University of Louisville. Rob Summers has also regained some bladder and sexual function after intensive rehabilitation and two years of electrical stimulation to his damaged spinal cord with a device normally used for pain relief, researchers reported Thursday.

Mad cow disease has the power to terrify, but at this point, U.S. consumers have far more to fear from other sources of food poisoning. There have been no human deaths from eating mad-cow-tainted beef in this country. Meanwhile, other food-borne illnesses kill 3,000 Americans a year; close to 400 die from salmonella alone, according to a 2011 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. That said, there's still reason for concern about this country's efforts to prevent mad cow - formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy - despite federal officials' rosy statements after a California dairy cow was discovered to have the disease.

In the remote northeastern corner of Guatemala, archaeologists have found what appears to be the 9th century workplace of a city scribe, an unusual dwelling adorned with magnificent pictures of the king and other royals and the oldest known Maya calendar. This year has been particularly controversial among some cultists because of the belief that the Maya calendar predicts a major cataclysm - perhaps the end of the world - on Dec. 21, 2012. Archaeologists know that is not true, but the new find, written on the plaster equivalent of a modern scientist's whiteboard, strongly reinforces the idea that the Maya calendar projects thousands of years into the future.

If Chumash descendant Teresa Raitt had been a bit more experienced researcher, or if curator John Johnson had been a bit less inquisitive, perhaps the sketches never would have been found. But thanks to Raitt's overzealous research at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and Johnson's sharp eye, the two of them have unearthed crude sketches of the original floor plan of the historic San Buenaventura Mission--sketches Johnson calls one of a kind.

No one knows how her body found its way into the stream or how long her parents may have searched the shallows for the missing 3-year-old. The child's fossilized skeleton -- a tiny skull, a jaw with baby teeth still intact, a clutch of finger bones, the curled commas of ribs -- are remains of a domestic calamity 3.3 million years ago when the human family was in its infancy, so long ago that the river in which she may have drowned has turned to stone.

Along an ancient African lake shore, scientists have unearthed 4-million-year-old bones of a previously unknown ancestral human species, including perhaps the oldest direct evidence that humanity's primitive predecessors walked upright. Researchers in Kenya and the United States on Wednesday unveiled the jaws, teeth and bones of several individuals belonging to the new pre-human species.

In a tale of booby-trapped tombs and hidden mummies, an archeologist affiliated with UCLA has found one of the most long-sought burial places of ancient Egypt hidden under an old woman's house in the so-called Valley of the Golden Mummies. For more than a century, archeologists have sought the tomb of the governor of Bahariya province, the second most powerful man in Egypt during the Roman-influenced reigns of Kings Apries and Ahmose II.

Today's travel photo of the day aptly depicts a monument celebrating travel and discovery. This image, taken by Times reader "LanaiLady," shows the Monument to the Discoveries in Lisbon. The monument is dedicated to the Portuguese who took part in Europe's Age of Discovery in the 15 th century. It was constructed in 1960 and commemorates the 500 th anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator, whose likeness gazes out at the Tagus river from the tip of the monument. Henry, a prince of Portugal, was a strong proponent of Portugal's efforts in discovery and exploration.

Forecast the Facts, the activist group that first confronted GM about its support of climate change doubters the Heartland Institute, now plans to muster a public campaign targeting the Discovery Channel. The purpose: to get Discovery to acknowledge the scientific consensus on man-made climate change in its programming. The flap follows the recent airing of the final episode of Discovery's lush exploration of the polar regions, “ Frozen Planet .” The last of the seven-hour series, “On Thin Ice,” was devoted specifically to presenting evidence of climate change - including discussion of the challenges facing polar bears, collapsing ice shelves, diminishing habitat, and naturalist David Attenborough (Alec Baldwin is the narrator and host of the series)

The Feb. 27 letter from the chairman of the Colorado River Indian Tribes was pleading and tough. It asked President Obama to slow the federal government's "frantic pursuit" of massive solar energy projects in the Mojave Desert because of possible damage to Native American cultural resources. The Obama administration didn't respond. But four days after Chairman Eldred Enas sent the letter, the Indians say they found an answer, delivered by spirits of the desert. Howling winds uncovered a human tooth and a handful of burned bone fragments the size of quarters on a sand dune in the shadow of new solar power transmission towers.

Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives have launched a probe into what appears to be a secret deputy clique within the department's elite gang unit, an investigation triggered by the discovery of a document suggesting the group embraces shootings as a badge of honor. The document described a code of conduct for the Jump Out Boys, a clique of hard-charging, aggressive deputies who gain more respect after being involved in a shooting, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation.

It was an extraordinary sight, even for Washington -- a space shuttle flying over the nation's capital atop a modified 747 on the way to its permanent new home, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. Crowds gathered on the National Mall, office workers peered out windows and motorists pulled to the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the retired Discovery orbiter , which made a sweep of the capital region, over the monuments, before landing at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.

Time Warner Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes is indisputably among the nation's highest-paid executives, but compared with his fellow media moguls, he is eking out a meager living. The New York media conglomerate that owns Warner Bros., HBO, TNT and Time magazine revealed Monday that Bewkes' 2011 compensation package was worth $25.9 million, down 1% from 2010. David Zaslav, CEO of Discovery Communications Inc., meanwhile, got a 23% raise in 2011 to $52.4 million. Other recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that, although there was some disparity, media chiefs again were richly rewarded.

State agricultural inspectors have enacted a quarantine and are going door-to-door in a Hacienda Heights neighborhood in an effort to help save the state's $2-billion citrus industry and beloved backyard fruit trees from a disease that has wreaked havoc in Florida and Brazil. The sale of citrus trees is banned in a five-mile radius around the Los Angeles County neighborhood where Huanglongbing, or yellow dragon disease, was first detected last week, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

British archaeologists have found the remains of a massive stone henge, or ceremonial circle, that was part of the ancient and celebrated Stonehenge complex, a find that is shedding new light on how the monument was built and its religious uses. The new henge, called Bluestonehenge because it was built with blue Preseli dolerite mined more than 150 miles away in Wales, was on the banks of the River Avon, where ancient pilgrims carrying the ashes of their dead relatives began the journey from the river to Stonehenge, nearly two miles away.

Richard Whitcomb, a mechanical engineer who changed the way we fly today with three design innovations that made airplanes fly farther and faster using less fuel, has died. He was 88. Whitcomb died of pneumonia Tuesday in Newport News, Va. His contributions, for which he won the most prestigious prize in aviation, focused on a plane's efficiency cutting through air at speeds approaching the sound barrier, or the "transonic region." As airplanes approach the speed of sound, they encounter a significant increase in drag, or force that resists the plane's movement through the air. Whitcomb made improvements to wings and how they attach to the fuselage to lessen the amount of drag on an airplane.

Almost everyone falls down a rabbit hole sometime in life. A trapdoor opens under your career, your relationships, your beliefs, and headlong you go, like Alice, into the void. For a few of the 50 female surrealist painters and sculptors represented in LACMA's exhibition "In Wonderland," that descent was a terrifying tumble into mental depression, physical danger, even suicidal despair. But for others it was a subterranean passage to creative fulfillment, erotic liberation and self-discovery, themes that artists such as Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Lee Miller, Kay Sage, Dorothea Tanning and Remedios Varo visited time and again in their works.

There's a world out there where a finger of ice can destroy everything in its path. Where strobes of green light dance across the sunless sky. Where unicorn-like creatures roam the sea. And it's not the stuff of CGI-loaded blockbuster fantasy film. It's "Frozen Planet, "a seven-part Discovery Channel and BBC mega-series exploring the Earth's arcane polar regions. (It premiered last week, but its first installment will repeat Sunday just before the second episode.) Made by the documentary team behind 2006's groundbreaking "Planet Earth" and narrated by Alec Baldwin, "Frozen Planet" is epic in scope and cinematic in execution, demonstrating how far nature documentary series have come.