ABC Science

AUSTRALIAN ARCHAEOLOGY: The chance discovery of one of the most important prehistoric sites in Australia pushes back the date of human occupation in the arid outback 10,000 years.

MYSTERY OF THE RINGS: Mapping of gravity data from the Moon by NASA's GRAIL mission may finally reveal how a huge bullseye-shaped basin formed on the Moon, say scientists.

DINO BRAIN: A brown bit of rock picked up in the UK by a professional fossil hunter a decade ago is the first piece of fossilised dinosaur brain tissue ever to be found, scientists have confirmed.

BIG BEASTS: A giant new species of long-necked dinosaur revealed today, sheds light on the likely origin of Australian sauropods.

ROUGH LANDING: Although fears grow for the ExoMars lander, scientists say the mission has been a success. Here's what we know so far.

FOSSIL CLUES: Discovery of the oldest known bird voice box is shedding light on what sounds dinosaurs were capable of making - or not!

IMAGE POWER: A striking photograph will always stir more emotions and create a bigger impact than a spreadsheet of statistics, says acclaimed National Geographic photographer Thomas Peschak.

A trio of European scientists has won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for developing molecular machines.

DIETARY CHOICES: People who carry a particular genetic mutation linked to obesity are more likely to crave high-fat food but bypass sugary foods, a new study indicates.

PACIFIC PEOPLE ORIGINS: The earliest seafaring ancestors of people living in South Pacific islands such as Vanuatu and Tonga arrived from Asia, an analysis of ancient DNA from four skeletons reveals.

STAR WARS SCIENCE: Australian scientists have created their own version of a Star Wars scene by stopping light in a cloud of very cold atoms, a development that provides a essential building block for quantum computing.

GENETIC HISTORY: The most comprehensive genomic study of Indigenous Australians to date not only confirms they are the descendants of the first people to inhabit Australia, but that there is remarkable genetic diversity across the continent.

QUANTUM LEAP: Scientists have shown they can teleport matter across a city, a development that has been hailed as "a technological breakthrough".

GONER GUMS: It may be harder to spot a mountain ash in parts of Australia's mountains or some species of mallee trees in the outback within 60 years as climate change causes the range of many species of eucalypts to shrink or even disappear entirely, new research suggests.

CHANGING GALAXY: An international team of astronomers has cracked the case of a mysterious galaxy that has suddenly dimmed after shining brightly for 30 years.

DYE PIONEERS: The blue indigo dye commonly used in today's jeans was used by pre-Hispanic communities in Peru around 6,000 years ago.

PLANETARY SCIENCE: The north pole of Pluto's moon Charon is dark red, and now scientists think they know why.

HUMAN FOOTPRINT: Planet Earth has lost one tenth it's area of wilderness since 1993 - an area equivalent to half of Australia, according to a new study.

DEVELOPING DOG SMARTS: Bandicoots on the island state of Tasmania fail to recognise dogs as a threat, despite co-existing with the domesticated predator for 200 years, a new study shows.

HUGE FIND: The oldest fossils known to date have been discovered in 3.7 billion-year-old rocks in Greenland by an Australian-led team of researchers.