British emergency services rescued an "exhausted" lost seal stranded in a muddy field about 30 kilometers (over 18 miles) from the sea in northern England on Monday.

Spotted by a woman walking her dog, photos of the incongruous marine creature lying on the grass spread quickly on social media and curious onlookers gathered at the field in Newton-le-Willows to see it.

Cars. Fishing boats. Houses. Entire villages. The 2004 tsunami left Banda Aceh with mountains of debris up to 6 kilometers (4 miles) inland.

Driving in the remade communities today, it's easy to wonder where it all went. Some of it is still there — recycled into road materials, buildings and furniture. Some of it was burned, creating new environmental hazards. And most of it was simply washed out to sea.

The first gorilla born in a zoo is turning 58 with a celebration broadcast live to online viewers from her Ohio home.

The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium says the female western lowland gorilla, named Colo, is celebrating her birthday Monday with an Ohio-shaped cake made of peanut butter, applesauce, honey, shredded carrots with Greek yogurt frosting.

A female orangutan got cleared to leave a Buenos Aires zoo she has called home for 20 years, after a court ruled she was entitled to more desirable living conditions, lawyers said Sunday. 

The 29-year-old orangutan, named Sandra, has been living in a zoo enclosure for two decades, which animal rights lawyers said was against her comfort.

The Marshall Islands is experiencing its worst-ever coral bleaching as global warming threatens reefs across the entire northern Pacific, scientists said Monday.

Marine researchers said an El Nino weather pattern had been developing in recent months, raising ocean temperatures and stressing delicate coral reefs.

One of four heavily damaged reactor buildings at Japan's tsunami-battered Fukushima nuclear power plant has been cleared of radioactive fuel rods, the operator said Saturday.

It was a significant step in the decommissioning efforts, but workers still have three heavily crippled reactors to clean up after they were sent into meltdown in the 2011 quake-tsunami disaster. 

Scientists in Japan have developed a sticky sheet of tiny sensors that can be put directly on moving joints, beating hearts or other living tissues.

The invention opens up the possibility of implanting almost unnoticeable sensors inside the body, letting doctors keep a close eye on a dodgy heart, for example.

Experts will meet in Kenya next month to discuss ways to save the critically endangered northern white rhinos from extinction.

The recent death of two of the rhinos in zoos has left only five captives left: a female at San Diego Zoo, a femaleat the Czech Dvur Kralove zoo, and two females and a male at Kenya's Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

After nearing extinction in Europe in the early 20th century because of hunting and shrinking habitats, large carnivores like the gray wolf, brown bear, lynx and wolverine are thriving once more.

So say the results of a study carried out across the continent, except Russia and Belarus, by an international team whose report was published Thursday in the U.S. journal Science.

The 2004 tsunami led to greater global cooperation and improved techniques for detecting waves that could reach faraway shores, even though scientists still cannot predict when an earthquake will strike.

A decade ago, scientists did not have a tsunami warning system in place in the Indian Ocean, because there had been no recent history of tsunamis there.