1 REMBRANDT ON THE ROCKS: The discovery of dazzling drawings of rhinoceroses and other animals in a French cave suggests that prehistoric art did not mature in a simple linear fashion but may have been punctuated by the influence of individual geniuses. The images in the Chauvet cave date from 30,000 years ago, 12 to 18 millenniums before comparable ones at Lascaux, in France, and Altamira, in Spain, and much earlier than anyone thought possible for such realistic portraits.

2 EINSTEIN STRIKES AGAIN Although it was predicted by Albert Einstein 70 years ago, scientists have just now found a new form of matter, called a Bose-Einstein condensate. By cooling a cloud of rubidium atoms almost to absolute zero (-459.67!F), the physicists forced them to march in lock-step formation, just as Einstein said they would.

3 THE LEAN PROTEIN Researchers, knowing that a defective gene causes mice to grow fat, purified the protein produced by the normal gene, injected it into plump mice and turned them into trim little rodents. Now scientists want to know if that compound, called leptin, will work on people too.

4 ANIMAL TRANSPLANTS Surgeons successfully transplanted genetically altered hearts from pigs into baboons, proving that the immunological barriers that normally limit such cross-species operations can be surmounted. Next, after other technical hurdles are overcome: pig hearts for people.

5 PROGRESS AGAINST AIDS Doctors discovered two groups of people who had been inadvertently protected against the aids virus by other infections, raising hope for the future development of an hiv vaccine. Meanwhile, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved new drugs that work with azt to boost the immune system.

6 SECRETS OF THE LOST TOMB By forcing open a door that was blocked for thousands of years, archaeologists working in Egypt's Valley of the Kings found what they believe to be the tomb of 50 sons of Ramesses II, the greatest (and most prolific) Pharaoh.

7 RETURN OF THE ICE MAIDEN The mummified remains of an Incan girl who was sacrificed to appease a mountain god 500 years ago were discovered in the Peruvian Andes. Anthropologists hope that analysis of her body and associated artifacts will answer many questions about how the Inca lived and died.

8 HEARTBURN HEAVEN These days there are more ways to treat heartburn than to get it. Two widely prescribed anti-ulcer drugs--Pepcid and Tagamet--were approved by the fda as over-the-counter remedies. A third drug, called Zantac, will become available in 1996.

9 ONE SMALL STEP One of evolution's enduring mysteries--the date when our ancestors first walked upright--may be close to being solved. Researchers working in Kenya found an ancient leg bone and other fossils, suggesting that bipedalism emerged at least 4 million years ago, 500,000 years earlier than any other fossils have indicated.

10 NASA'S GRAND SLAM The Hubble Space Telescope produced astonishing pictures of cosmic clouds, stellar nurseries and galactic collisions. The space shuttle executed a flawless linkup with the Russian space station Mir--twice. And a probe from the intrepid spacecraft Galileo became the first man-made object to plunge through the upper atmosphere of the planet Jupiter.

...AND THE WORST

THE REAL HOT ZONE In a grisly coincidence, last spring's plague movie Outbreak, about an Ebola-like virus hitting a California town, was echoed by a real-life outbreak of the dread virus in Zaire. Dormant for 16 years, the disease swept through the Central African country, causing gruesome hemorrhagic fevers and killing at least 244 people (many of them health-care workers) before going underground again. At year's end, Ebola resurfaced in western Africa, this time in the Ivory Coast and possibly Liberia.