Paleontology is a very interesting area of natural science. As a naturalist, I love to think about the plants and animals that were alive on the planet thousands and millions of years ago, and it's interesting to me to think about how different (or similar!) our current natural world is.
I thought I'd point to this article about a very cool new discovery in Germany: a new genus of [extinct but fossilized] primate believed to be at some point in the evolutionary scale between early primates and early humans. It's named after Darwin (her species name is Darwinius masillae) and the discovery is published in what is known as an "open access" scientific journal -- that is, it's free to anyone who wants to read it and learn about this very cool discovery. I haven't linked directly to the article, but you can find it from the page I've linked to. It's pretty long and very dense, so I kind of like the condensed version myself!
I like this story in particular because it's both about a nifty new paleontological discovery as well as being from a group of scientists who want to share their discoveries freely with the world. Awesome.
