A mega-quake in 1255 that wrecked the Nepalese capital, wiped out a third of the population of Kathmandu Valley and killed the country's monarch, King Abhaya Malla, was of a kind that may return to the Himalayas, seismologists reported on Sunday.

Experts from Nepal, France and Singapore mapped deposits of river sediment displaced along part of the fault line where the Indian subcontinent slams into the Asia tectonic plate at up to 50 millimeters (1.97 inches) per year.

The roar of chainsaws has replaced birdsong, the once-lush, green jungle scorched to a barren grey. The equivalent of six football pitches of forest is lost every minute in Indonesia.

The disappearance of the trees has pushed thousands of animals -- from the birds they harbor and sustain to orangutans, gibbons and black panthers -- out of their natural homes and habitats.

A major report on climate change being compiled by the United Nation's climate science panel was on Friday leaked online in what appeared to be an attempt by a climate sceptic to discredit the panel.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the full draft of its Fifth Assessment Report, which is not set for official publication until next September, had been published online by one of 800 experts contributing to the report.

Researchers have discovered a new slow loris species in the jungles of Borneo, according to findings published this week in the American Journal of Primatology.

Known for its toxic bite, the slow loris -- a nocturnal primate found across Southeast Asia -- is closely related to a lemur and is characterized by unique fur coloration on its face and body.

Australia Saturday announced plans to drill a 2,000 year-old ice core in the heart of Antarctica in a bid to retrieve a frozen record of how the planet has evolved and what might be in store.

The Aurora Basin North project involves scientists from Australia, France, Denmark and the United States who hope it will also advance the search for the scientific "holy grail" of the million-year-old ice core.

To millions of people, the Christmas tree is a cheerful sight. To scientists who decipher the DNA codes of plants and animals, it's a monster.

We're talking about the conifer, the term for cone-bearing trees like the spruce, fir, pine, cypress and cedar. Apart from their holiday popularity, they play big roles in the lumber industry and in healthy forest ecosystems.

Nearly 4 out of 5 Americans now think temperatures are rising and that global warming will be a serious problem for the United States if nothing is done about it, a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds.

Belief and worry about climate change are inching up among Americans in general, but concern is growing faster among people who don't often trust scientists on the environment. In follow-up interviews, some of those doubters said they believe their own eyes as they've watched thermometers rise, New York City subway tunnels flood, polar ice melt and Midwestern farm fields dry up.

N. Joseph Woodland, inventor of the now ubiquitous bar code that revolutionized retail, has died at the age of 91, US media reported Friday.

Woodland came up with the zebra-like pattern used to store information as he drew lines in the sand on a Miami beach 64 years ago, his daughter, Susan Woodland, told the Record, a New Jersey newspaper.

NASA will smash two tiny probes into the Moon on Monday after they spent months gathering data from orbit miles above the lunar surface, the U.S. space agency said Thursday.

"We're not expecting a big smash, a big explosion," said project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Their fuel tank will be empty and they are the size of a washing machine."

Organisms long thought to have been the ancestors of early marine creatures may in fact have lived on land, said a fossil study Wednesday that may prompt an overhaul of the tree of animal life.

If correct, the finding could challenge the commonly held theory that life had thrived in the oceans for hundreds of millions of years before spreading to land.