These are ten of the biggest strides made by scientists in the last ten years. Photo illustration by Meilan Solly Millions of new scientific research papers are published every year, shedding light on everything from the evolution of stars to the ongoing impacts of climate change to the health benefits (or determents) of coffee to the tendency of your cat to ignore you. With so much research coming out every year, it can be difficult to know what is significant, what is interesting but largely insignificant, and what is just plain bad science. But over the course of a decade, we can look back at some of the most important and awe-inspiring areas of research, often expressed in multiple findings and research papers that lead to a true proliferation of knowledge. Here are ten of the biggest strides made by scientists in the last ten years. New Human Relatives Cranium of Australopithecus sediba from South Africa, the holotype fossil for the species. Photo by Brett Eloff. Courtesy Profberger and Wits University via Wikicommons under CC BY-SA 4.0 The human family tree expanded significantly in the past decade, with fossils of new hominin species discovered in Africa and the Philippines. The …