Short Science, June 16, 2013

Palaeontologists have made the surprising evolutionary discovery that ancient fish may have had abdominal muscles, previously thought to have only developed in land animals. Researchers mapping the oldest fossilised vertebrate muscles ever seen - in gogo fish thought to be 380 million years old -- worked out the position of the muscles and the orientation of the muscle fibres, in a study published in the journal Science. The fossils, found in Western Australia's Kimberley region, are enclosed in limestone nodules and are known for their exceptional preservation. AFP

Fifty years ago today, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly into space in a scientific feat that was a major propaganda coup for the Soviet Union. Two years after Yuri Gagarin's first manned flight, Tereshkova became a national heroine at 26 when she blasted off in a Vostok-6 spaceship. She remains the only woman to have made a solo space flight. In April 1962, officials selected five candidates for the flight: two engineers, a school teacher, a typist and a factory worker who had made 90 parachute jumps: this was Tereshkova. After seven months of intensive training, they chose Tereshkova. AFP