ABC Science

ANCIENT WHALES: The ancestors of today's gentle giants of the ocean were equipped with the razor-sharp teeth of a fearsome predator and could have hunted seals and penguins, rather than the tiny krill they eat today, scientists say.

ART OF SCIENCE: A beautiful image that unearths the mysteries of embryonic lung development is one of the winning entries in this year's Art of Science competition.

SAILING SPIDERS: Trapdoor spiders are reluctant travellers, but millions of years ago one species appears to have made an epic journey from Africa across the vast Indian Ocean to call Australia home.

VINYL LIFE?: A compound that may form cell wall-like structures has been detected in the dense atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.

ANCIENT HISTORY: The ancient Canaanites were not exterminated as described in the Bible, but lived on to become modern-day Lebanese, according to the first study to analyse their DNA

CUSTOMISED NEURONES: Researchers are 3D printing customised nerve cells to treat brain disorders

DEEP CONNECTION: New excavations of a rock shelter near Kakadu National Park indicate humans reached Australia at least 65,000 years ago - up to 18,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously thought.

RUNAWAY STARS: New research suggests super-fast stars in the Milky Way are actually 'runaways' - from another galaxy.

BEAT OF LOVE: Just like a human drummer, male palm cockatoos uses drumsticks to beat out a steady rhythm.

FELINE HISTORY: A new study on how cats conquered the world - and our hearts - has answered long-standing questions.

SPOOKY ACTION: Scientists have used satellite technology for the first time to generate and transmit entangled photons - particles of light - across a record distance of 1,200 kilometres on Earth.

EINSTEIN'S IMPOSSIBLE HOPE: Astronomers have used the gravitational warping of light, predicted by Einstein nearly a century ago, to measure the mass of a distant star for the first time.

HUMAN EVOLUTION: The discovery of fossil remains of Stone Age humans in Morocco pushes back the date of the origin of Homo sapiens by 100,000 years.

HOT DISCOVERY: The hellish alien Jupiter-like world dubbed KELT-9b is beyond what astronomers have ever studied. It glows like a comet and is so hot it's likely that molecules break apart and atmosphere evaporates.

SPACE-TIME RIPPLES: For the third time, physicists have detected a gravitational wave: a tiny ripple in the fabric of space-time.

PARKER SOLAR PROBE: It's been on NASA's bucket list for 60 years, and now the ambitious mission to touch the Sun is in its final phase before launch. So just how do you send a spacecraft into the Sun without it burning up?

MUMMY MYSTERIES: Mummies from ancient Egypt have revealed another secret - some of them share very little of the sub-Saharan African ancestry that dominates the genetic heritage of modern Egyptians.

THAWING PERMAFROST: Arctic peatlands may become a substantial source of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, when they thaw, a new study suggests.

SPACE TRAVELLERS: Freeze-dried sperm that was stored in space aboard the International Space Station (ISS) for nine months has been used to produce healthy mice pups on Earth.

FAST CHANGE: The Antarctic Peninsula is not only getting warmer, it's getting dramatically greener with a sharp increase in plant growth over the past 50 years.