Australia

For more than a century, biologists assumed that the bony plates found in the skin of lizards – nature's chain mail – were an ancient feature that some lineages inherited and others later lost. But new evidence suggests this is entirely wrong.

There's an old saying that everything in Australia wants to eat you – and this apparently includes plants. Now scientists have made a special find, stumbling across a massive community of a rare meat-eaters living closer to humans than ever before.

We'd like to welcome this curious armless burrowing lizard into the New Species Hall of Fame. Despite being built for life underground, in the end this slider skink was no match for scientists who had searched for a decade to confirm its existence.

Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest known meteorite impact crater in Western Australia. It has been dated to about 3.5 billion years ago, at a time when these almost literally Earth-shattering events should have been occurring regularly.

Scientists have created the first kangaroo embryo by in-vitro fertilization, which is a landmark moment for pouch-toting marsupials. Years in the making, it's a massive step in future-proofing hundreds of species facing imminent extinction.

In one of the most amusing citizen science projects we've ever seen, Australia's top research agency is asking its citizens to hit the gas and flag their flatulence in hilarious detail over three days, tracking toots on the Chart Your Fart app. Superb.

Seeing a wombat in regional Australia is not a rare experience, but when ecologists captured this particular one emerging from a den and casually wandering past a motion-sensor camera in the middle of the night, there was serious cause for celebration.

When it comes to life expectancy in high-income English-speaking countries, a new study has found that America has sat in last place since 2001. Australia remains the best performer and, the researchers say, should serve as a model for how the US can do better.

How do we separate the movie myths of Tyrannosaurus rex from the actual animal? The Victoria the T-rex exhibition sets the record straight with recent discoveries about what T-rex looked and sounded like, how it sensed the world, and how it hunted.

Geese have a reputation for being aggressive birds, so imagine one that’s more than 6.6 ft tall and weighs about 507 lb. That’s Genyornis newtoni, an Ice Age “thunder bird” from Australia, for which scientists have now found the first complete skull.

The sex life of a tiny Australian marsupial known as an antechinus is already pretty bizarre. But now its mating season has gotten even stranger – and darker – thanks to the introduction of cannibalism, as observed by field researchers.

As Australian as kangaroos, the Christmas beetle holds a special place in hearts Down Under. But December sightings of these majestic creatures have become as rare as seeing Santa. Scientists are now asking the nation to help them find out what's going on.