In the depths of an Indonesian rainforest, scientists have identified the first known frog that gives birth to tadpoles instead of laying eggs, according to research.

Known as Limnonectes larvaepartus, this member of the Asian group of fanged frogs was first discovered decades ago by Indonesian researcher Djoko Iskandar.

Boris Morukov, a Russian cosmonaut and doctor who led an extraordinary experiment in which volunteers simulated a flight to Mars while never leaving a Moscow car park, has died at 64, his scientific institute said Friday.

"We announce with grief that Boris Morukov died suddenly on New Year's Eve," Moscow's Institute of Biomedical Problems, where Morukov was deputy director, said on its website.

Angry Maasai herders in Tanzania killed six lions that had attacked livestock, in the latest clash between man and beast in the region.

The government said it was "saddened to learn that six lions, an endangered species" were killed overnight Thursday in the northern Babati District, adding it would attempt to identify and prosecute those responsible.

Six Chinese companies have been fined $26 million for discharging tens of thousands of tonnes of waste chemicals into rivers, state media said, the biggest such penalty ever in China.

The firms in Taizhou in the eastern province of Jiangsu were sued by a local environment protection organisation and were found to have dumped 25,000 tonnes of waste hydrochloric acid into two rivers, the Xinhua news agency reported.

Recent heavy rains have brought a mushroom boom to parts of California.

The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat (http://bit.ly/14awdeP ) reports that lands parched by a three-year drought just a few months ago are now seeing an explosion of both poisonous and edible mushrooms after about 2 feet of rain saturated grassy hillsides and swelled streams in Sonoma County.

European researchers said Monday they have devised the first tiny motion detector that could help find microscopic life forms on distant planets.

Until now, scientists have tried to find signs of extraterrestrial life by listening for sounds that might be emitted from an alien world, by scanning the skies with potent telescopes and by sending robotic probes and rovers to analyze the chemical fingerprint of samples from comets and planets.

A teenager who escaped a shark attack that killed his friend in western Australia has described how he fired his spear gun into the suspected great white as authorities searched for the animal Tuesday.

The victim, named by local media as 17-year-old Jay Muscat, died after he was bitten on the leg by a shark while spear-fishing off Cheynes Beach, near Albany in the southern tip of Western Australia (WA) state, on Monday.

An Australian ranger has captured the moment a python swallowed a wallaby at a national park in a giant feast that could keep it full for three months.

Ranger Paul O'Neill was patrolling Nitmiluk National Park in the Northern Territory when he heard numerous birds making alarm calls and came across the feeding frenzy.

Agreements on climate change -- to paraphrase what the 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck said about law-making -- are like sausages.

It's best not to know how they are made.

A rare Sumatran tiger in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo has killed and eaten her two five-week-old cubs in a blow to its captive breeding program, its chief vet said Monday.

The mother tiger, named Hana, had given birth to three cubs after being mated with a tiger from Germany called Avigdor, Nili Avni-Magen told Agence France Presse.