“Dr. SkySkull” selects several notable posts each week from a miscellany of ResearchBlogging.org categories. He blogs at Skulls in the Stars.

• At a Loss for Words: Modern Lessons From a Lost Language. This year, a 17th century letter in Peru was uncovered that contains traces of an unknown and otherwise lost language.  This is fascinating in and of itself, but Krystal D’Costa of Anthropology in Practice discusses how this discovery reflects on the modern race to document rapidly vanishing languages.
• Redefining Great Britain. Traditionally, maps have been drawn using geographical features, population centers, and a nontrivial amount of politics.  Recently, though, a group of researchers decided to look at a new metric for defining the boundaries of regions: telephone networks.  Over at Maniraptora: Tastes Like Chicken, GrrlScientist explains the details.
• Solar powered hornets? There’s been a lot of talk over the past week or so about arsenic-eating bacteria, but there are plenty of other creatures that draw sustenance from unusual sources!   Dan Bailey at Smells Like Science describes recent research that suggests that a certain species of hornet may be partially solar powered!
• Meet the Milky Way. Finally, sarah at One Small Step introduces us to: The Milky Way!  She describes a new citizen science project in which regular folks can play a role in classifying objects in our own galaxy.

Check back next week for more “miscellaneous” suggestions!