Australian scientists said Wednesday cavers had stumbled upon a vast network of tunnels containing fossils that could offer key insights into species' adaptation to climate change.

The limestone caves in Australia's far north contained what University of Queensland paleontologist Gilbert Price described as a "fossil goldmine" of species ranging from minute rodents and frogs to giant kangaroos.

The Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse landed back home in Switzerland late Tuesday after completing the final leg of its historic transcontinental flight.

The high-tech aircraft was greeted by an enthusiastic crowd of supporters at Payerne airport in western Switzerland two months after it took off from there on May 24 on a journey that took it from Europe to North Africa and back.

A community of French earthworms has been discovered stealthily colonizing a farm in Ireland, possibly aided by global warming to thrive so far north of their natural habitat, a study said.

No clash seems to be looming as the French worms prefer to eat a different part of the soil as their Irish cousins, according to a report Wednesday in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters.

The sleepy South African town of Carnarvon has more churches than ATMs, but science is breathing new life into the far-flung farming center.

The former 19th-century mission station is the closest town to a science and astronomy hub that is forming in the arid central Karoo region where the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) mega-telescope will be built.

Sally Ride, the first American woman to journey into space, died on Monday after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer, her foundation announced. She was 61.

Ride first launched into space in 1983 aboard the Challenger shuttle, taking part in the seventh mission of U.S. space shuttle program.

Modern humans were likely a greater threat to the Neanderthals than major natural events like extreme cold weather or volcanoes, according to British-led research released on Monday.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was based on an analysis of volcanic ash that showed the largest known eruption in Europe came after traces of the Neanderthals had largely disappeared.

The sex sounds flies make can lead to a violent death -- luring predator bats to their love nests while their defenses are down, a report said Monday.

Researchers who studied a small community of flies and bats in a cowshed near Marburg, Germany, found that the insects' chances of becoming dinner were dramatically higher while copulating.

In the debate over natural gas drilling, the companies are often the ones accused of twisting the facts. But scientists say opponents sometimes mislead the public, too.

Critics of fracking often raise alarms about groundwater pollution, air pollution, and cancer risks, and there are still many uncertainties. But some of the claims have little — or nothing— to back them.

When a 100-pound shipment of lobsters arrived at Bill Sarro's seafood shop and restaurant last month, it contained a surprise — six orange crustaceans that have been said to be a 1-in-10-million oddity.

"My butcher was unloading them and said, 'Oh, my gosh, boss, they sent us cooked dead lobsters,'" said Sarro, owner of Fresh Catch Seafood in Mansfield, Mass. "He then picked one up and it crawled up his arm."

Taiwan is scheduled to take delivery next month of a powerful multiple-launch rocket system aimed at neutralizing former rival China's amphibious landing capabilities, local media reported Sunday.

The weapon, called Ray Ting 2000 or "Thunder 2000", will be put into service in August, said the Taipei-based Liberty Times, as the military plans to phase out the current rocket system introduced three decades ago.