The oldest known species of crocodile had an armor-plated head and a body half the length of a subway car, according to research released Tuesday by US scientists who identified the now-extinct creature.

Nicknamed "Shieldcroc" for its impressive head plate, the aquatic reptile swam in the waters of Africa some 95 million years ago and is the newest discovery of an ancient crocodile species, said the study in the journal PLoS ONE.

A professor from American University in Cairo says discovery of prostate cancer in a 2,200-year-old mummy indicates the disease was caused by genetics, not environment.

The genetics-environment question is key to understanding cancer.

Thirty people, most of them homeless, have died of hypothermia in recent days in Ukraine, part of a surge of deaths across eastern Europe as the region grapples with an unusually severe cold spell.

In all, at least 54 people have died from the cold in Europe over the last week.

Across southern Florida, rabbits, raccoons, bobcats and foxes have been disappearing at dramatic rates over the past decade, and invasive Burmese pythons are to blame, a U.S. study said.

The big snakes which are native to Southeast Asia have been devouring all kinds of wildlife leading to "severe declines" in once common animals, said the study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The part of the brain used for speech processing is in a different location than originally believed, according to a U.S. study Monday that researchers said will require a rewrite of medical texts.

Wernicke's area, named after the German neurologist who proposed it in the late 1800s, was long believed to be at the back of the brain's cerebral cortex, behind the auditory cortex which receives sounds.

An elephant in Amsterdam's zoo has made history after being fitted with a jumbo-sized contact lens following an eye injury, a statement said Monday.

"Win Thida is the first elephant in Europe with a contact lens," the Artis zoo said on its website.

Japan's population is expected to shrink to a third of its current size over the next century, with the average woman living to over 90 within 50 years, a government report said Monday.

The population is forecast to decline from the current 127.7 million to 86.7 million by 2060 and to tumble again to 42.9 million by 2110 "if conditions remain unchanged", the health and welfare ministry said in the report.

The arid plains fringing Australia's desert center are more suited to camels than blooms of coral but there, hundreds of miles from the coast, a piece of the Great Barrier Reef has been put on ice.

Suspended in a liquid nitrogen chamber of minus-196 degrees Celsius (-320 Fahrenheit), the 70 billion sperm and 22 billion coral embryos are part of an ambitious Australian-first project to preserve and perhaps one day regenerate the world-famous reef.

It was the talk of Davos, grabbing the imagination of a forum otherwise shrouded in gloom: a miracle machine that cracks the code of life within hours and could revolutionize healthcare.

Patients will no longer have to wait weeks to know if they have cancer and their doctors will know immediately what kind of disease they have, allowing them to target therapies precisely and to avoid harmful delays or mistakes.

An asteroid about the size of a bus shaved by Earth on Friday in what space watchers described as a "near-miss," though experts were not concerned about the possibility of an impact.

The asteroid, named 2012 BX34, measured between six and 19 meters in diameter (20 to 62 feet), said Gareth Williams, associate director of the U.S.-based Minor Planet Center which tracks space objects.