Snow-capped Mt Taranaki stands out in this view from space in a new book.

Even small human populations can wipe out big animal species, according to local researchers who suggest moa extinction was rapid.

Making lessons relevant and suited to students' shortened attention spans are some of the reasons why young women are flocking to chemistry lessons at one school.

Changes to the Southern Ocean's sea ice belt could mean see the global level rising several metres, says a new study which has shed more light on an ice-age mystery.

They clumsily bang against our windows and make themselves a springtime nuisance - but the humble bumblebee could prove more valuable to New Zealand's economy than we ever imagined, researchers....

Skinks might not be as ''sexy'' as other endangered wildlife but giving $146,000 to support the work of a community group focusing on boosting the Otago skink population is money well spent, Conservation Minister Nick Smith says.

The start of a war will be commemorated this week -- one waged not on foreign battlefields, but across our own offshore islands.

The world's leading expert on the poisoning of the oceans has described how he was "utterly shocked" by the true amount of plastic floating on the sea, warning that it potentially posed a bigger threat to the planet than climate change.

Half the planet should be set aside solely for the protection of wildlife to prevent the "mass extinction" of species, according to one of the world's leading biologists.

A strong stance on climate change by New Zealand could inspire and embarrass other nations into following our lead, says a world-renowned climatologist.

A treasure trove of the remains of hundreds of mammals from the Ice Age has been discovered in a cave in Wyoming.

A third of the permanent snow and ice on the Southern Alps has vanished in less than four decades, according to an analysis of aerial surveys.

Intensive and sometimes controversial forms of threatened species management may be needed to reverse the increasing rate of global biodiversity losses, a University of Otago zoologist says.

The chances of an El Nino playing with our weather this summer have become more likely, according to a just-released report from the World Meteorological Organisation.

Driven by exceptionally warm ocean waters, Earth smashed a record for heat in May and is likely to keep on breaking high temperature marks, experts have said.

The regime governing genetic modification in New Zealand is one of the strictest in the world, writes Bob Forlong.

Albert Einstein may be most famous for his mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2, but his work also laid down the foundation for modern quantum mechanics.

Research spanning the effects of hormones on a pregnant mother's brain to the potentially negative health effects that pets may have on families can begin.

An outspoken ecologist has been charged with possessing illegal trees - trees he insists don't exist.

Whenever humanity's baser side seems to be winning, whenever we lose our heads because we can't seem to stop shooting ourselves in the foot.

Six University of Canterbury students are taking part in what has been called a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity.

Australian and Kiwi researchers have edged closer to the "holy grail" of plant science with a groundbreaking study that could change the way farmers irrigate and fertilise their land as the world warms.

An animal believed to have been extinct for four million years has been found near Picton.

A "ghost snail", a tiny fringed fairyfly named Tinkerbell and a pale yellow sea anemone that is at home under a glacier are on an international list of the 10 top species discovered last year.

The Antarctic ice sheet is disappearing at twice the speed of when it was last surveyed, losing 159 billion tonnes of ice to the ocean every year.