The best science images of the year

Daniel Cressey in Nature:

In a year of political turmoil and shock, science, too, came up with surprises. To document some of these wonders, photographers roamed the world, revealing objects from the microscopic to the cosmic in scale.

FANTASTIC FOOT

This spectacular tarsus — the lowermost segment of an insect leg — is roughly 2 millimetres in diameter and belongs to a male diving beetle, which uses it to attach to a female’s back during mating.

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