Milagros Cerron was born April 27, 2004, in Huancayo, Peru, with a rare condition in which both legs are fused together, known as sirenomelia, or “mermaid syndrome“. She captured the hearts of Peru when a highly-skilled plastic surgeon, Dr. Luis Rubio, allowed to have the operation to separate her legs televised. Milagros means “miracles” in Spanish, and it was one of a few miracles in the life of precious Milagros, that she survived beyond her birth.
These worms are strange animals, living at unbelievable depths and temperatures in the soil. Princeton University biologists discovered this incredible, ugly species of nematode at 1.3 kilometers beneath the surface in a gold-mining town called Beatrix, South Africa.
They were aptly named “Worms of Hell” by the biologists. Scientifically, however, Dr. Onstott, a member of the research team, named them Halicephalobus Mephisto, after the author Faust’s “The Devil Mephistopheles”.
