A silvery meteor, a cosmic "butterfly," and a rare green comet feature among the most beautiful, dramatic, or surprising space news pictures of the year, as chosen by National Geographic News editors.

Sunlight turns Italian waters to liquid gold, supernovae get in shape, Saturn's largest moon casts a long shadow, and more in our selection of the week's best space pictures.

Mountain lions, grizzly bears, and cutthroat trout are among the Rocky Mountain animals snapped during a recent photography expedition to the Flathead region, which conservationists say is threatened by mining, logging, and drilling.

The environment—and the environmental movement—suffered significant setbacks in 2009, experts say. Among the lowlights: Lemurs became food, a lot of ice became water, and in the Caribbean some sharks became nonexistent.

Octopuses off Indonesia make stow-and-go shelters out of empty coconut shells, a new study says. Once they stopped laughing, scientists hailed the behavior as a new form of tool use.

What do quiver trees, clownfish, and koalas have in common? They're among ten "flagship" species likely to suffer huge loses due to a diverse array of global warming impacts, according to a new report.

The fossil "water bushpig"—as the locals call it—fills in a gap between primitive land-dwelling mammals to today's aquatic sea cows, a new study says.

Climate change is turning up the heat on some of the U.S.'s already threatened species, including ten highlighted by a new Endangered Species Coalition report.