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Researchers have discovered an ancient virus, Mollivirus sibericum. An ancient squirrel's nest has led to the new discovery. Jean-Michel Claverie, a professor of medical genomics and bioinformatics at the University Of Mediterranean School Of Medicine in Marseille, France said "Actually there's already a science-fiction novel inspired by one of our last (discoveries). Look on Amazon".

However, Claverie said that when it comes to the ancient squirrel, one might think about a movie. The virus is thought to be 30,000 years old resting at nearly 30 meters below the Siberian permafrost. Astrobiologists have collected core samples looking for life.

According to a scientist behind unearthing of the new species, thousands of fossils, which could add up to 15 more Homo naledis remained untouched inside the South African cave at Cradle of Humankind world heritage site.

Scientists unearthed 15 fossilized bodies of earlier unknown human species from an underground graveyard. It can't be denied that the discovery could hugely affect and change the history of mankind.

While talking to TOI, Matthew Skinner, ex Skinner, expert of biological anthropology at the University of Kent said that the remains will be giving them an insight into origins of the lineage which could ultimately result into appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens.

The pink bottlenose dolphin, nicknamed Pinky, was seen by Captain Erik Rue. Rue is also the person who spotted Pinky for the first time in 2007. Rue said he witnessed Pinky mating, so he's curious to see if she's pregnant.

Rue said he is very curious to know if Pinky will now have a dolphin calf soon, if yes, what will be its color?

Experts said in a statement there are possible that Pinky's parents were like any other regular dolphin, but each of them had one copy of the above-mentioned mutation in the same gene.

Rue said when passengers aboard his charter catch sight of Pinky he slows down so that viewers could easily get a better glimpse and even take some pictures.

American space agency NASA says engineers working on the Orion capsule have welded together the first two segments of the capsule. According to NASA, this is a step closer to sending manned spacecraft on a deep space journey to Mars.

This crucial task was accomplished on Saturday, at the agency's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, said agency.

"Every day, teams around the country are moving at full speed to get ready for the Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), when we'll flight test Orion and SLS together in the providing ground of space, far away from the safety of Earth", said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a United States National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site, has closed the Whiteoak Sink area through March 31. The step has been taken to protect bats from the spread of white-nose syndrome.

As per sources, so far this is the second closure of the area aiming to limit human disturbance to bat hibernacula and help hikers avoid interactions with bats. The area had been closed from September 2014 to March of this year.

Park biologists also reported about the dramatic declines of cave-dwelling bat populations throughout the Park. They linked this sudden decline to white-nose syndrome (WNS), in which infected bats are marked by a white fungal growth on their noses, wings and tail membrane.

There are reports of revelation of millions of Ashley Madison's passwords. A team of password-cracking hobbyists found mistakes in the encryption of approximately half of the 32 million stolen accounts on the website. The password-cracking hobbyists examined the data that the Ashley Madison hackers released.

The password cracking squad, called CynoSure Prime, hacked 11 million passwords from accounts of Ashley Madison customers. Initially, the group's findings were published in a report by ArsTechnica.