How did the snake get its slither? Ever since the crafty serpent in Genesis tempted Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, we’ve been fascinated by snakes. And, despite our interest in this animal, we have a poor understanding of how it actually evolved.

But scientists have now released a new study on the fossil of a snake that appears to have lived between 100m and 146m years ago. And what’s more it had legs.

NASA’s announcement of the discovery of a new extrasolar planet has been met with a lot of excitement.

But the truth is that it is impossible to judge whether it is similar to Earth with the few parameters we have – it might just as well resemble Venus, or something entirely different.

New research has found talented adolescent female athletes are bullied for their successes by their school peers.

The research also revealed that being bullied at school about their sports achievements left young female athletes with lasting psychological and social problems they carried into adulthood.

In a self-professed sports-mad country, why is this happening?

From trilobites to tyrannosaurs, most fossils are of creatures with hard shells or bones. These materials don’t easily biodegrade and sediment has time to build up around them and turn them into a record of the creature that is still with us millions of years after it has died. Soft-bodied organisms like worms, on the other hand, decay rapidly and their fossil record is decidedly patchy.

In exceptional circumstances, however, their remains are preserved and sometimes in the most unusual places. With the right detective skills, palaeontologists can use such discoveries to open up whole new windows on the history of life on Earth. A recent discovery found in 50-million-year-old rocks from Antarctica has yielded a particularly incredible example: fossilised worm sperm.

After more than 20 years making the web a slightly more interesting and interactive place, albeit one that pandered to designers’ worst excesses and (in pre-broadband days) led to interminable download waiting times, the word on the net is that Adobe Flash Must Die.

Conservationists tend to spend their time worrying about protecting forests, catching poachers or keeping carbon out of the atmosphere. But all these things (and more) are driven by humans. Given that it’s easier and cheaper to reduce the human birth rate than it is to address these other issues, why aren’t conservationists more concerned about keeping our population down?