It’s 2038 and Earth's trees are dead, bar some firs on a tiny island. The tale of what happened is an epic combining sci-if, mystery and an exposé of capitalism, says Sally Adee

A mixture of two carbon-based chemicals can spontaneously form molecules that can copy themselves, hinting at how life may have begun on Earth

Desert ants zigzag around the searing sand at high speed but they always manage to find their way home. A new book explains their amazing abilities

A fossil of a predatory reptile from the dinosaur era is missing the front of its jaws, suggesting it was attacked by a rival that bit them off

Brazil’s yellow cururu toads eat scorpions, and they can survive five times the dose of scorpion venom that would kill a mouse – the same as 10 stings

Genetic analysis suggests all Arabica coffee plants are descended from a single common ancestor, and this lack of genetic diversity makes them vulnerable to extinction

The highest dwelling mammal – a mouse – has been discovered at 6700 metres above sea level, where conditions are so harsh they have been compared to Mars

Penguins are the first seabirds we have recorded making sounds under water – they may be calling out for help when they hunt or making noise to disorient their prey

Climate change is leading to lower numbers of marine life towards the equator – including mammals, birds, fish and plankton – while populations nearer the poles increase

Tropical seas are ecological hotspots where predators should be active and easy to catch – but 50 years of data shows sharks are easier to catch in cooler seas

Bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Australia, form alliances and coordinate the timing of their clicking noises to attract females and deter other males

Plant-eating cave bears vanished when ice spread across Europe – maybe because their large sinuses prevented them chewing meat to adapt to the new conditions

The age of a whale shark can be determined by dating the rings of growth in their cartilage, a method that has confirmed that these animals can live for at least 50 years

Two lineages of ancient monkey migrated from Africa to South America more than 30 million years ago. But we’re not sure which ones got there first

Pale spear-nosed bats can learn to alter their calls to mimic different sounds – a rare skill that could help us understand the biology of human speech and language

An alligator carcass dropped in the deep ocean reveals the bizarre ecosystems of the seabed - including zombie worms that fed on prehistoric reptiles

In what now seems like a galaxy far, far away, Republican lawmakers routinely talked up the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67. In fact, we were in that galaxy just three...

Investors in SkyBridge Capital asked for hundreds of millions of dollars back after the fund suffered a 23% loss in March when investments made by its debt-focused hedge fund managers soured, Anthony...

Gowns 4 Good, a charity started by frontline physician assistant Nathaniel Moore, is asking graduates to donate their gowns to more than 77,000 frontline responders on Gowns4Good.net.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday made an indirect dig at President Donald Trump's Navy Blue Angels flyover this weekend, saying that political leaders have 'no right to praise them and then ignore their needs.'

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany on Friday said it appears that the FBI 'manufactured' a crime in the case of President Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, after the Department of Justice moved to drop the case on Thursday.

A king kobra is spotted near a train station in Singapore, animal rescuers were alerted to catch it.

Firefighters are battling high winds and extreme heat as they try to slow the spread of the biggest wildfire ever recorded in California

Bad news on the climate should lead neither to despair nor unfounded optimism. Instead, we need to roll up our sleeves and prepare for life on a drastically changing planet

The “Equal Earth” projection shows the true area of continents such as Africa without greatly distorting their shapes and is already being adopted by NASA

At Unseen Amsterdam, striking images of a melting glacier are stirring visitors to action

If big rocks fall far enough they can explode with more energy than any non-nuclear bomb – and the ensuing shockwave can snap large trees half a kilometre away

Vast machines have left the subterranean world of a potash mine in the Urals with ammonite-like whorls, photographed for a project to highlight lasting human impacts on the planet.

Some rocks in Tasmania, Australia, look out of place. Now an analysis suggests they were once part of the rocks that form the Grand Canyon in the US

From Kenyan children picking through plastic waste to swathes of Germany laid waste for coal mining, a film shows why we are in a new, human-created epoch

A tsunami kept pinging back and forth for three days after being triggered by the 8 September 2017 Mexico earthquake, posing even more risk to human life

Armed with drones, helicopters and military-grade software, a British photographer has developed a new way to remember glaciers

On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 became the first crewed spacecraft to circle the moon. Emerging from its dark side, one astronaut reached for his camera

Sea level rise estimates are moving upwards. There could be at least a 1.3 metre rise by 2100, which would spell disaster for coastal communities

Many people assume an asteroid triggered the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs, but geologists say massive volcanic eruptions occurred at the same time

Scientists are setting out to drill for the world’s oldest ice, in a bid to shed light on a dramatic tipping point in the world’s climate 900,000 years ago

An analysis of pollen suggests cannabis evolved on the Tibetan Plateau, not far from a cave that was frequented by our ancient Denisovan cousins

A valley longer than the Grand Canyon hidden beneath the Greenland ice sheet may carry running water. How quickly it flows may affect how the ice melts

We thought the Amazon got the essential nutrient phosphorus from Saharan dust. Now it appears it mainly comes from forest fires and people burning wood

A mini ice age that lasted 125 years started in the 6th century. Now we may have identified the volcano that kicked it all off

The Atacama Desert is one of the most hostile places on Earth, but new microbes arrive there every day on dust grains carried by the wind

Hundreds of scientifically priceless fossils are extracted in horrendous conditions in Myanmar’s amber mines and smuggled over the border for sale in China

This rare image shows massive pyrocumulonimbus clouds that form above fires and can funnel as much smoke into the lower stratosphere as moderate volcanic eruptions

An epic project has worked out how much carbon there is on Earth. The answer is 1.85 billion billion tonnes – and most of it is underground

From Etna to Vesuvius, Santorini to Stromboli, volcanoes have long been linked to excellent wines. New book Volcanoes and Wine explores this unlikely terroir

Undersea fibre-optic cables for transmitting data can also be used to detect earthquakes and find fault lines offshore

Taal volcano, situated on an island in a lake, began erupting dramatically on Sunday, prompting an evacuation order for 450,000 people in the surrounding area

Buildings may one day be made using a strain of bacteria that creates a concrete-like material when combined with sand and nutrients

To find subjects to photograph, Kacper Kowalski takes to the air in a paramotor or gyrocopter, barely steering to allow the wind to dictate the direction

It took 20 years of planning and lots of hot water to drill 2 kilometres into Antarctica. Andy Smith describes a ground- breaking achievement