5 Most Incredible Discoveries of the Week

"It's a pretty scary statue," says an archaeologist of one of the week's big finds: the three-headed watchdog of hell.

1. Guardians of 'Hell's Gate' Unearthed in Turkey: What's a "Gate to Hell" without a couple of scary guardians lurking outside? Appropriately, archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed two marble statues that once guarded the fabled portal to the underworld.
2. Brightest Space-Blast Ever Shocks Scientists: Notice a little white spot in the sky earlier this year? That may have been the brightest gamma-ray explosion on record mixed with a powerful supernova, a combination scientists had never seen before.

3. Big Find 2.6K Feet Below Greenland Ice Sheet: For the first time, researchers have discovered lakes underneath the Greenland Ice Sheet. And while there are almost 400 known lakes beneath the Antarctic ice sheets, these are different.
4. New Zealand Quakes Made Earth's Crust Weaker: How nasty were the deadly quakes that hit New Zealand one after another in 2010 and 2011? So bad that they appear to have seriously weakened the Earth's crust, scientists reveal in a new study.
5. Buddha's Birthday Wrong by 200 Years: Experts: Buddha may have achieved enlightenment two centuries earlier than experts believe—if an ancient timber shrine can be taken at face value.

Click for even more discoveries from the week, including a dour one about Darwin's frogs. (More discoveries stories.)