Figuring out the story of human origins is like assembling a huge, complicated jigsaw puzzle that has lost most of its pieces. Many will never be found, and those that do turn up are sometimes hard to place. Every so often, though, fossil hunters stumble upon a discovery that fills in a big chunk of the puzzle all at once — and simultaneously reshapes the very picture they thought they were building. The path of just such a discovery ...

What was believed to be the sixth human foot to wash up on the shores of British Columbia in recent months proved to be a fake, authorities said Thursday. A "skeletonized animal paw" had been placed in a sock and athletic shoe that was packed with dried seaweed, the British Columbia Coroners Service announced. The hoax was uncovered as the coroner's office began DNA and other forensic tests on the supposed foot in an attempt to identify the person ...

The space shuttle Discovery was waved off from its first chance to land Friday afternoon because of unstable weather near Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA said. The shuttle will make another orbit of Earth, while NASA mission managers watch to see if extreme moisture and lightning threaten a safe landing. The next opportunity to land in Florida would come at 7:23 p.m. ET; however, Mission Control told the shuttle crew the forecast for that time "looks about the same." ...

The space shuttle Discovery will land in California Friday evening, NASA said after bad weather near Kennedy Space Center forced it to wave off a landing in Florida. The shuttle is scheduled to touch down at 5:53 p.m. (8:53 p.m. ET) at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, where the weather is described as "pristine," NASA said. A California landing adds a week to the turnaround time before the shuttle can be ready for another mission and adds ...

The space shuttle Discovery will stay aloft another day after NASA mission managers scrubbed its second and final opportunity to land Thursday, citing bad weather near Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The next landing opportunity for Discovery will come shortly before 6 p.m. ET on Friday, officials said. That landing would also take place in Florida. The shuttle initially was set to land at 7:05 p.m. ET Thursday. After the crew woke up to the Beatles' "Good Day Sunshine," Discovery ...

Scientists have discovered a new species of giant rat in a remote rainforest in Papua New Guinea. Measuring 82 centimeters (32.2 inches) from nose to tail and weighing around 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds), the species is thought to be one of the largest rats ever to be found. The discovery was made by a team from the BBC Natural History Unit inside the crater of Mount Bosavi -- an extinct volcano in the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea. ...

Space shuttle Discovery launched just before midnight Friday on a mission to the international space station. The crew of seven astronauts includes one from Mexico and another from Sweden. One of those seven, Nicole Stott, will remain on the station as a flight engineer, while astronaut Timothy Kopra is to return home aboard the shuttle. Also on board: The Leonardo logistics module, science experiments and the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT), named for fake newsman Stephen Colbert ...

Don't count Jon Gosselin out of the picture just yet. Reports of his saying he's ready to withdraw from TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8" are not only premature -- they just aren't true. "I never said that," Jon told PEOPLE while speaking outside his house on Wednesday. "A fan asked me, 'Don't you sometimes wish you could go back to a 9-to-5 job' [And my reply was,] 'Yeah, because this is 24/7 and 9-to-5ers punch in and punch ...

Infomercial pitchman Billy Mays died at his Tampa, Florida, home Sunday morning, authorities told CNN. The 50-year-old known for his shouting OxiClean ads was pronounced dead at 7:45 a.m. The Hillsborough County medical examiner will perform an autopsy, Tampa police Lt. Brian Dugan said. Mays was on the US Airways flight from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Tampa on Saturday that had a hard landing at Tampa International Airport when the plane's front tire blew out. There were no reported injuries on ...

Dueling theories of how the universe was created got a split decision Friday night from the Texas Board of Education, which required examination of "all sides of scientific evidence" in new science standards, but rejected language requiring teachers to teach the "strengths and weaknesses" of scientific theories. The debate pitted proponents of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution against supporters of religion-based theories of intelligent design, or creationism. "Science loses. Texas loses, and the kids lose because of this," board chairman ...