On Saturday night, March 28, look for lights to go out in more than 2,800 cities, towns, and villages for Earth Hour. But first, see darkening skylines of Earth Hour 2008 in before-and-after pictures.

The world's most advanced electron microscope has finally revealed how bones begin—as a small cluster of about ten charged particles.

Many captive clouded leopards are killed or neglected by their mothers, but two new cubs are the fruits of research to prevent brutality during breeding. With video.

More than 50 potentially new species have been discovered in the mountain rain forests of Papua New Guinea, conservationists announced Wednesday.

A galaxy erupts with blazing particles, a dummy is put to smart use on the space station, and more in the week's best space pictures.

Post-eruption pictures of Alaska's Redoubt Volcano reveal massive mudflows and a swath of ash visible from space. And Redoubt may be just getting started, experts say.

Animals in Alaska continue to suffer from the remaining 21,000 gallons (79,500 liters) of oil left from the Exxon Valdez spill, the worst in U.S. history, conservationists say.

See rubbermaking, space training, and more in this weekly update of life's moments from around the world.

Alaska's Redoubt Volcano, the ninth most dangerous volcano in the U.S., has so far produced five eruptions that have sent ash and smoke 9 miles (15 kilometers) into the sky.

In a phenomenon occurring just twice a century, tens of millions of rats decimate fields and forests in northeast India and parts of Burma and Bangladesh. The cause: bamboo.

A tiny mouse living in small patches of mountain forest is among four unexpected species recently discovered high in the Andes, researchers announced.

Druid celebrations, pyramid pilgrimages, and street fires are among the many ways the world welcomes the first day of spring on the vernal equinox.

It's about as unlikely as capturing a "fossil sneeze," one researcher noted. But the soft bodies of 95-million-year-old octopuses were found preserved in Lebanese rocks.

Have a look at an astonishing volcanic eruption, a rare wild-born reptile, and the last hurrah of a Seattle newspaper in our editor's picks of the week's best news pictures.

Dried perfume oil found in a bottle belonging to Hatshepsut, the gender-bending pharaoh who reigned in the fifteenth century B.C., may help us "put our noses back in time," one scientist says.