Under the rich Venezuelan soil, paleontologists have found treasures rivaling the bountiful oil: a giant armadillo the size of a Volkswagen, a crocodile bigger than a bus and a saber-toothed tiger.

Oil companies' surveys of the soil have uncovered a trove of fossils dating from 14,000 to 370 million years ago.

NASA hopes to unravel more of the Moon's mysteries Friday by launching an unmanned mission to study its atmosphere, the U.S. space agency's third such probe in five years.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is to launch Friday at 11:27 pm (Saturday 0327 GMT) aboard a Minotaur V rocket -- a converted peacekeeping missile -- from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

U.S. researchers said Wednesday they have found a way to reverse Down syndrome in newborn lab mice by injecting an experimental compound that causes the brain to grow normally.

While the study in the journal Science Translational Medicine offers no direct link to a treatment for humans, researchers are hopeful it may someday offer a path toward future breakthroughs.

New Zealand said Thursday it may revise its plans to create the world's largest ocean sanctuary off Antarctica after they were blocked by Russia earlier this year, amid concerns the proposal may be scaled-back.

The plan for a 1.6 million square kilometre (640,000 square mile) fishing-free haven in the Ross Sea, supported by the US, was knocked back after Moscow raised objections at an international meeting in July.

A pint-sized android has uttered the first robotic words in space, showcasing Japan's drive to combine cutting-edge technology with cuteness.

The wide-eyed and bootie-wearing "Kirobo" -- roughly the size of a chihuahua -- broadcast a message from inside the International Space Station, greeting citizens of Earth and paying cheeky tribute to Neil Armstrong.

The Marshall Islands symbolically disposed of confiscated shark fins at sea Tuesday in a ceremony witnessed by regional leaders attending the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

The gesture underscored the progress made towards protecting the marine predators since the Marshalls declared a two million square kilometre (770,000 square mile) shark sanctuary in 2011, Angelo Villagomez from the U.S.-based Pew Charitable Trusts said.

Hundreds of thousands of dead fish were left floating in a Chinese river after a chemical discharge, officials said Wednesday, the latest industrial accident to pollute the country's battered environment.

About 100,000 kilograms of fish were cleared from 40 kilometres of the Fu river in Wuhan, the capital of the central province of Hubei, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing "local government investigations".

A large asteroid has been named after Alejandro Jodorowsky, the cult Franco-Chilean film-maker and science-fiction comics writer who later became a spiritual guru.

The Minor Planets Center, a branch of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), has listed asteroid 261690 Jodorowsky at the request of a French astronomer who spotted the five-kilometer (three-mile) -wide object more than seven years ago.

Humanity has pushed the world's climate system to the brink, leaving itself only scant time to act, the head of the U.N.'s group of climate scientists said on Monday.

"We have five minutes before midnight," warned Rajendra Pachauri, whose organisation will this month release the first volume of a new assessment of global warming and its impacts.

A new kind of skin-eating fungus has been killing fire salamanders in the Netherlands at an alarming rate, European researchers said Monday.

The boldly colored yellow and black salamanders have dwindled rapidly since 2010, with just four percent of their original population left.