Pope Francis will visit Ireland in 2018. Whether he will venture into the North isn’t yet known but, later in the year, Belfast will welcome another distinguished visitor.

Dippy the Diplodocus has become a monster trending hit on Twitter as supporters rally to stop him being put out to pasture by the Natural History Museum — and being replaced by a blue whale from Wexford Harbour.

The word big does not do justice to a massive, long-necked dinosaur that shook the Earth in Argentina about 77 million years ago.

The first pictures showing a live specimen of a rodent species once thought to have been extinct for 11 million years have been taken by a retired Florida State University professor and a Thai wildlife biologist.

A ‘JURASSIC beaver’ that was paddling around before the hey-day of the dinosaurs is changing scientists’ view of early mammals.