Earth's surface shows features that clearly testify to some kind of catastrophic event, or series of events, that operated on a vastly larger scale than today's geologic processes. Whatever happened had a devastating impact on living creatures large and small, terrestrial and marine.

Bone worms have specialized features that enable them to bore holes through whale bones. Ecologically, they serve to recycle whale bones back into the undersea environment. New research has discovered more about where they came from, and the results are not helpful to the evolutionary account.

The further an investigation gets from testable science, the more speculative it becomes. How many inferences and ad hoc stories does it take before a scientific endeavor becomes science fiction? Two recent proposals from professional cosmologists step squarely across the boundary between conjecture-containing science and just plain conjecture.

Extremophiles are organisms that can thrive in unexpectedly hostile environments. These include bacteria and fungi growing in extremely hot, cold, nutrient-deprived, or salty environments. Experiments that purposely stress extremophiles in order to test their limits have shown that earth's tiniest cells have many survival tricks up their sleeves.

The Guinness Book of World Records is renowned for its collection of odd feats and extraordinary measurements. One of its entries may someday be a young miniature stallion named Einstein, which promises to rewrite the record as the smallest horse ever.