• Bridie Smith

The days are longer and lighter. And while the temperatures haven't been typically spring-like, the annual Cambrian-like explosion of backyard bugs is on. So who is your friend and who is your foe? The answers might come as a surprise.

Images taken by a NASA Mars orbiter indicate that Europe's missing probe fell to the Red Planet's surface from a height of 2 to 4 kilometres and was destroyed on impact.

• Marcus Strom

The head of the Charles Perkins Centre said that while he wasn't surprised at the monitoring, "it is kind of creepy".

• Christine Cooper and Christofer Clemente

Echidnas may not seem the most active of animals.

• Bridie Smith

The world has a new dinosaur: a barrel-bellied giant herbivore that stood as tall as a giraffe and grazed the grasslands of what is now central-west Queensland.

A European space lander reached Mars on Wednesday in what scientists hope will mark a major milestone in the exploration of the Red Planet, but whether it touched down on the surface in good working condition is far from certain.

• Henry Zwartz

They are the hauntingly beautiful black and white images that would not look out of place at any distinguished photo gallery. But they're the product of years of hard work by some of the world's top scientists and engineers.

• Marcus Strom

While "prying into the sex lives of snakes", Professor Rick Shine put himself on the path to the Prime Minister's Prize for Science.

• Kenneth Chang

This is not just an idle trivia question for planetary scientists.

• Bridie Smith

Researchers have observed for the first time how villainous cancer cells attack and destroy the bone of leukaemia patients using a new "street view' system to zoom in and spy on the invaders.

• George Dvorsky

After re-examining data acquired by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, astronomers have detected wavy patterns in two of Uranus's dark system of rings — patterns that may be indicative of two undiscovered moons.

• Bridie Smith

Australian researchers have discovered that peptides contained in the milk of Tasmanian devils can kill some of the most deadly bacterial and fungal infections, including golden staph.

• Sarah Kaplan

Scientists believe a comet hitting the Earth caused global warming 55.6 million years ago, an event that can help us understand climate change today.

• Stephen Hutcheon

NBN Co's second satellite has been successfully deployed and will soon begin providing broadband services to tens of thousands of homes and businesses in rural and remote Australia.

• Carl Zimmer

​On August 4, 1997, Jeanne Calment passed away in a nursing home in France. The Reaper comes for us all, of course, but he was in no hurry for Calment. She died at age 122, setting a record for human longevity.

• Sarah Kaplan

Nobel committee compares three scientists' breakthroughs to the invention of the first crude electric motors.

• Matt Baker

Harvard University researchers have used a metre-long petri dish to show the frightening speed at which bacteria can evolve and develop resistance to modern antibiotics.

Discoveries boosted research in condensed matter physics and raised hopes for uses in new generations of electronics and superconductors or future quantum computers.

• Clare Sibthorpe

When ANU researchers stumbled upon skeletal remains at the oldest known cemetery of the Pacific Island Lapita culture, they did not expect it to solve a centuries-long debate.