Pentaquarks-status report

I discuss the recent experimental and theoretical developments following the discovery of the Theta/sup positive pentaquark, an exotic uuddsmacron baryon resonance observed in the KN channel by several experiments, and an exotic Xi*/sup -$/(ddssumacron) reported by NA49 at CERN. I focus on the theoretical interpretation of the data, both in terms of quark and chiral degrees of freedom, on the predictions for related exotic states, and on several unresolved questions raised by the experimental data, such as why some experiments observe the pentaquarks and other don't, the apparently extremely narrow width of the Theta/sup positive and the determination of its parity. I also describe the likely properties of the proposed heavy-quark pentaquarks, an anticharmed exotic baryon Theta/sub c/ (uuddcmacron) and Theta/sub b//sup positive (uuddbmacron), which are expected to be extremely narrow or even stable against strong decays. H1 recently reported observation of a possible Theta/sub c/ candidate in D*e/sup positive /sup negative annihilation and gammagamma collisions in the LEP data and at B- factories.