Two 21-year-old climbers—including Rob Gauntlett, one of National Geographic Adventure magazine's 2008 adventurers of the year—died on the Alps' tallest mountain Saturday.

First-ever footage released by a conservation group shows a rare Hispaniolan solenodon, one of the few living mammals that use venom.

A piglet nuzzles a chicken as Ebola threatens, a Chinese mummy has a surprisingly good hair day, and more in the week's best news photos.

Harvesting the biggest individuals causes a 300 percent faster evolution rate, leaving only smaller and younger animals to reproduce, a new study says.

Some 93 million years ago, dinosaur-era "sea monsters" swam the seas above what is now Utah. Thanks to paleontologists, more evidence of the ancient beasts is now surfacing.

Pulsar energy, Saturn storms, and an out-of-this-world balloon are among the week's best space images.

The far-ranging microbes may use the weather cycle to disperse themselves—an idea that "would have been viewed as crazy 25 years ago," researchers say.

Global warming, or climate change, is a subject that shows no sign of cooling down. Here's the lowdown on why it's happening, what's causing it, and how it might change the planet. Includes photo gallery.

Chemical signatures in 635-million-year-old rock suggest our planet once had an otherworldly atmosphere that might have helped melt millions of years' worth of deep freeze.

Animal-skin pages of early medieval manuscripts contain genetic material capable of solving long-standing mysteries about the works, according to new research.

A layer of Earth's magnetosphere—the shield that protects Earth from solar winds—has recently come into focus.

Within the last decade, the Chubut province in Argentina has become a paradise for paleontologists seeking fossilized clues about the flora and fauna from millions of years hence.

Using "Schwarzenegger" strength, the ancient flying reptiles could make a leaping launch from flat ground in less than a second, a new study says.

Like the wakes of cosmic speedboats, oddly shaped bow shocks reveal single stars careening through the cosmos at more than 112,000 miles (180,250 kilometers) an hour.

At an extremely deep oil-drilling site, a remote control submersible's camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—"elbowed" Magnapinna squid. With video.