Palaeontologists have made the surprising evolutionary discovery that ancient Australian fish may have had abdominal muscles, previously thought to have only developed in land animals.

Researchers mapping the oldest fossilized vertebrate muscles ever seen -- in Gogo fish thought to be 380 million years old -- worked out the position of the muscles and the orientation of the muscle fibers.

Far beyond the caress of sunlight, micro-organisms are flourishing at great depths beneath the ocean floor, scientists reported on Wednesday.

U.S. biologists looked for telltale scraps of genetic code in a core drilled deep into the sedimentary floor of the Pacific Ocean off Peru.

It's just a tiny thing -- a single-celled organism visible only under a microscope -- yet it is one of the most successful life forms on the planet.

So say scientists who on Wednesday published the DNA code of an ocean alga called Emiliania huxleyi, whose astonishing adaptability enables it to thrive in waters from the equator to the sub-Arctic.

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard joined forces with former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger Thursday to urge global action on climate change, saying politics must be put aside.

The unlikely pair met in Perth and jointly penned an opinion piece that ran in News Limited newspapers.

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PARIS, June 12, 2013 (Agence France Presse) - More pest species are becoming resistant to the most popular type of genetically-modified, insect-repellent crops, but not in areas where farmers follow expert advice, a study said on Monday.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday unveiled a $19.5 billion plan to boost the city's defenses against climate change, seven months after superstorm Sandy devastated the U.S. East Coast.

The blueprint features structures like a series of six-meter-high (20-foot) waterfront walls and dikes to prevent flooding of the kind that idled the city for days in the late October 2012 storm.

By the 2050s, more than 800,000 New York City residents could be living in a flood zone that would cover a quarter of the city's land and New Yorkers could sweat out as many 90-degree (32-Celsiu) days as is now normal for Birmingham, Alabama, as effects of global warming take hold, a scientists' group convened by the city says.

With local waters higher than they are today, 8 percent of the city's coastline could see flooding just from high tides, the group estimates. And while the average day could significantly hotter, a once-in-a-century storm would likely spur a surge higher than Superstorm Sandy, which sent a record 14-foot (4.3-meter) storm tide gushing into lower Manhattan.

China was to launch its longest-ever space mission on Tuesday, with its second woman astronaut among the crew, as it steps up its ambitious space program, a symbol of the country's growing power.

The Shenzhou-10 -- the name means "Divine Vessel" -- was due to lift off at 0938 GMT from the Jiuquan launch center in the Gobi desert.

China is to send its second woman astronaut into orbit on its longest mission yet, space officials said Monday, as the country works towards building a space station.

The Shenzhou-10 -- the name means "Divine Vessel" -- will be launched on a Long March rocket at 0938 GMT Tuesday, Wu Ping, spokeswoman for China's manned space program, told a news conference.

Rising carbon emissions will place parts of India, China, Southeast Asia, East Africa and the northern Andes at a higher risk of extreme floods, a study published on Sunday says.

Global warming will boost the frequency at which exceptional floods occur in these regions, while eastern Europe, parts of Scandinavia, Chile and Argentina will have fewer such events, it suggests.