The third anniversary of the Boxing Day tsunami is observed, China unveils its first homemade commercial jet, Bavarian "monsters" celebrate Christmas, and more.
Take a photographic tour of the remote seed bank deep inside a Norwegian mountain that is designed to house the world's crop varieties in case of a global catastrophe.
"Hyper-auroras" on Jupiter, clues to Mars's watery past, and the destruction of a stellar icon were among the out-of-this world discoveries that ranked as the year's most popular.
A rat about five times the size of its city cousins and a possum described as "one of the world's smallest marsupials" were found during a recent expedition to the island of New Guinea.
A law that gives forest-dwelling tribes the right to cultivate their traditional lands will devastate India's endangered wildlife, some conservationists argue.