An ancient plant that grew underwater in what is modern day Europe, had no petals and bore one single seed may have been the world's first known flowering plant, a study said Monday.

More than 1,000 fossils of the plant, called Montsechia vidalii, were pored over for the new study, which seems to oust a Chinese plant that has also been considered among the first.

Central Asian glaciers have melted at four times the global average since the early 1960s, shedding 27 percent of their mass, according to a study released Monday. 

By 2050, warmer temperatures driven by climate change could wipe out half the remaining glacier ice in the Tien Shan mountain range, reported the study, published in Nature Geoscience.  

Researchers from Kansas, Michigan and Nebraska are modifying an oilseed for use as a potential diesel replacement.

Their work on Camelina sativa is focused on lowering its viscosity — essentially, its resistance to flowing. Plant oils typically have a high enough viscosity that they build up in engines, limiting their use as petroleum product replacement, The Topeka Capital-Journal (http://bit.ly/1HPGAjE ) reports.

On a sun-scorched wasteland near India's southern tip, an unlikely garden filled with spiky shrubs and spindly greens is growing, seemingly against all odds.

The plants are living on saltwater, coping with drought and possibly offering viable farming alternatives for a future in which rising seas have inundated countless coastal farmlands.

How do algae react to the warming of the Arctic Ocean? How is it affecting wildlife in the fjords? To find answers, researchers rely heavily on divers who brave the icy waters to gather samples.

"Without them, we wouldn't be able to successfully complete our projects," admits Cornelia Buchholz, a marine biologist who is working at Ny-Alesund on Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago in the heart of the Norwegian Arctic.

A popular campground at Yosemite National Park in California will be temporarily closed after several dead squirrels were found to be carrying the plague, officials said Friday. 

The move comes about a week after a girl who visited the park tested positive for the plague. She was treated and has recovered. 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Saturday defended Australia's carbon pollution reduction target as in line with those of other countries after the nation's climate change authority criticized the goal as "disappointing".

The government on Tuesday announced plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2030, well below the level recommended by the independent Climate Change Authority which advises the government on the issue.

Astronomers have discovered a planet 100 light years away that looks a lot like Jupiter once did and may offer new insights on how planets are formed, researchers said Thursday.

Known as 51 Eridani b, it is the first exoplanet detected by a new instrument called the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), according to the report in the journal Science.

Air pollution is killing about 4,000 people in China a day, accounting for 1 in 6 premature deaths in the world's most populous country, a new study finds.

Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that about 1.6 million people in China die each year from heart, lung and stroke problems because of incredibly polluted air, especially small particles of haze. Earlier studies put the annual Chinese air pollution death toll at 1 to 2 million, but this is the first to use newly released Chinese air monitoring figures.

The current El Nino, nicknamed Bruce Lee, is already the second strongest on record for this time of year and could be one of the most potent weather changers of the past 65 years, federal meteorologists say.

But California and other drought struck areas better not count on El Nino rescuing them like in a Bruce Lee action movie, experts say.