Fascinating new science discoveries

A tadpole of a frog named Frankixalus jerdonii, belonging to a newly found genus of frogs. Such tadpoles feed on unfertilized eggs from their mothers.

An artist's impression of stone monoliths found buried near Stonehenge could have been part of the largest Neolithic monument built in Britain, archaeologists say. The 4,500-year-old stones, some measuring 15 feet in length, were discovered under 3 feet earth at the Durrington Walls "superhenge."

The frogs are only found in certain parts of Central and South America.

Overview of the chancel burial excavations. Archaeologists (from left to right) Mary Anna Richardson, Danny Schmidt, David Givens, Dan Smith, Don Warmke, Jamie May, Dan Gamble, and Dr. William Kelso. Photo by Michael Lavin,

Palaeontologists have found the remnants of the turtle's ancestor, the 240-million-year-old prehistoric Pappochelys rosinae, which fills in the gaps about how turtles got their shells. P. rosinae had the makings of a shell, with T-shaped ribs and hard webbing along its belly. Full shells didn't appear until around 214 million years ago, reports Discover, perhaps when the turtle's ancestors were water-dwelling and needed to protect their major organs as well as control buoyancy.

A massive black hole whose mass is 12 billion times that of our sun's is believed to be found by scientists billions of light years from Earth. (Image is an artist's impression of a black hole.)

Archaeologists discovered skeletons which appear to be holding hands during an excavation at the Chapel of St. Morrell in Leicestershire, England, a site of pilgrimage in during the 14th Century.

Huge holes have been discovered in a Siberian region nicknamed "the end of the world," reports the 'Siberian Times.'

A drawing of the world's largest-ever flying bird, Pelagornis sandersi, shows its size next to a California condor, bottom left, and a Royal albatross, bottom right. The giant bird's skeleton was discovered in 1983 near Charleston, but its first formal description was released July 7 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This artist's conception shows the Uranus-sized exoplanet Kepler 421-b, which orbits an orange, type K star about 1,000 light-years from Earth.

An illustration of the new raptorial dinosaur, Changyuraptor yang.

Mercuriceratops, center, compared with two other horned dinosaur species.

Hydrous ringwoodite synthesized from olivine in Steve Jacobson’s laboratory.

A diver looks at a sea anemone off Saba island in the Caribbean in 2012.

Two geoducks found in the shaft.

A hive of honeybees is on display at the Vermont Beekeeping Supply booth at the 82nd annual Vermont Farm Show at the Champlain Valley Expo in Essex Junction, Vermont,, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014.

Edmontosaurus regalis

An aerial view of Tel Kabri, a 75-acre site in Israel that houses the ruins of a city dating back to approximately 1700 B.C. Researchers discovered a large wine cellar there while studying the areas in and around the palace.

Astronomers discovered a spinning asteroid that's throwing off at least six comet-like dust tails, the first time that's been seen.

Paleontologists unveiled in November a new dinosaur discovered four years ago in southern Utah that proves giant tyrant dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus rex were around 10 million years earlier than previously believed. The fossils were found in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in November 2009, and a team of paleontologists spent four years digging them up and traveling the world to confirm they were a new species. Paleontologists believe the dinosaur lived 80 million years ago in the late Cretaceous Period on a landmass in the flooded central region of North America.

A new volcano was discovered off the coast of Japan.

The Cold Spot area resides in the constellation Eridanus in the southern galactic hemisphere. The insets show the environment of this anomalous patch of the sky as mapped by Szapudi’s team using PS1 and WISE data and as observed in the cosmic microwave background temperature data taken by the Planck satellite. The angular diameter of the vast supervoid aligned with the Cold Spot, which exceeds 30 degrees, is marked by the white circles.

Fifty years of National Science Foundation investment led to the first detection of gravitational waves mid-February. The find confirms Albert Einstein's predictions about the strength of gravity, and it also gives us new information about black holes, two of which are pictured above in a computer simulation.

Astronomers in Germany found a massive comet-like object in February 2017. It's 100,000 times larger than Halley's comet.

National Institutes of Health researches reported in January 2017 the discovery of molecular mechanisms that could be responsible for a form of premenstrual syndrome, opening the door to treatment possibilities.

Skeletal remains eight centuries old were found near the ancient city of Troy.

The "Klingon Newt," discovered in northern Thailand in December 2016.

A star named Kepler achieved the status of roundest natural object ever discovered in the universe, according to a study from November 2016.

In February 2017, researchers determined Zealandia, a piece of land east of Australia, qualifies as a continent despite the fact that 94 percent of it is under water.