A British geneticist said Thursday he may have solved the mystery of the yeti, after matching DNA from two animals said to be the mythical beast to an ancient polar bear.

"We have found an exact genetic match between two samples from the Himalayas and the ancient polar bear," said Bryan Sykes, emeritus professor at Oxford University.

Palaeontologists on Wednesday said they had uncovered the earliest known complete nervous system, found in an unusual fossilized creature that lived 520 million years ago.

Measuring just three centimeters (slightly over an inch) long, the animal belongs to the megacheirans, a group of clawed marine animals that lived during the Cambrian, a time of riotous biodiversity.

Australian and New Zealand scientists Thursday said they have devised the "first rigorous framework" on deciding whether to relocate endangered animals threatened with extinction by climate change.

The researchers said it was designed to quantify whether the benefit of moving a vulnerable species outweighed the ecological cost.

Russian divers Wednesday pulled from a murky lake in the Urals a half-tonne suspected meteorite said to have been part of a meteor whose ground-shaking shockwave hurt 1,200 people in February.

The dramatic recovery operation came eight months after a piercing streak of light lit up the morning sky in the central Russian region of Chelyabinsk in scenes some locals said made them think of the onset of a nuclear war.

Australia, New Zealand, the United States, France and the EU on Wednesday stepped up pressure on Russia for a swift agreement to create vast Antarctic marine sanctuaries.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), comprising 24 nations plus the European Union, meet in Australia next week with Russia seen as key to protecting large swathes of the wilderness area.

Britain's only female giant panda is believed to have suffered a miscarriage, Edinburgh Zoo said on Tuesday.

It was a doubly sad day for British zoos, after London Zoo also announced Tuesday that the first tiger cub born there in 17 years had drowned.

The world's leading energy officials will meet this week in South Korea to discuss the sector's major challenges, ranging from climate change to the rise of fracking and nuclear power's uncertain future.

The 22nd World Energy Congress begins Monday in the southeastern city of Daegu, which has set its sights on becoming a model for the use of renewable energy, particularly solar.

Thousands marched Sunday across Romania to protest against a Canadian company's plans to open a gold mine seen as a threat to the environment, and called for the government's resignation.

In what has become one of the longest-running protests in post-communist Romania, an estimated 4,000 people demonstrated in the capital Bucharest to demand the mine project in Rosia Montana be dropped.

Iran is planning to send another live monkey into space within a month, a top space official said in remarks reported by media Sunday.

"The second live animal will be ready within a month to be sent into space," said Hamid Fazeli, deputy head of Iran's space organisation, the Jomhuri Eslami newspaper reported.

China marks 10 years since it first sent a human into space Tuesday, with its ambitious programme rocketing ahead while rival NASA is largely closed due to the U.S. government shutdown.

Yang Liwei orbited the Earth 14 times during his 21-hour flight aboard the Shenzhou 5 in 2003, blazing a trail into the cosmos for China.