2012 review: The year in life science

Read more: "2013 Smart Guide: 10 ideas that will shape the year"

The last 12 months have brought more insights into life's origins on Earth ? as well as a prediction about its ultimate fate. We've learned more about life's extremes thanks to biologists working in the driest desert, in the coldest continent ? and to a certain Hollywood director's trip into the deepest ocean trench on the planet.

It's also been a year that has taught us more about our species' origins, from the origin of art to the earliest evidence of medicine. Here are 10 more of our favourite stories of 2012.

Eats bark, fruit and leaves: diet of ancient human
Australopithecus sediba, a 2-million-year-old member of the human family, had a diet unlike other known hominins

Buried microbes exist at limit between life and death
Sediment 30 metres below the Pacific seafloor is so nutrient-poor that microbes barely fuel their cellular functions ? yet they may be thousands of years old

Prions point to a new style of evolution
A form of evolution that involves neither genetic nor epigenetic changes to the DNA has been seen in yeast

Was humanity born in the mother of all plagues?
Early in human evolution, our ancestors switched off two key genes. Doing so may have allowed us to fight off an epidemic of bacterial disease

First land plants plunged Earth into ice age
When the first simple mosses colonised the land, they unleashed vast ice sheets and triggered a mass extinction

Biological clock began ticking 2.5 billion years ago
An enzyme found in nearly all forms of life runs on a 24-hour clock and dates back to a pivotal moment in evolution

Chinese human fossils unlike any known species
The newly described Red Deer Cave people show an unusual mixture of modern and primitive features. Where did they come from?

Reptile grew feather-like structures before dinosaurs
Some 80 million years before the first feathered dinosaurs, Longisquama grew impressive structures using the same genes

DNA could have existed long before life itself
The idea that life began with RNA ? simpler than DNA ? looks less certain now that a DNA-like molecule has been made from basic compounds

Captured: the moment photosynthesis changed the world
For the first time, geologists have found evidence of how modern photosynthesis evolved 2.4 billion years ago

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