Typhoons, a skeletal mammoth and iron claws all feature in this month's rather scary image collection. And to satisfy those gentler readers, we've also included some colourful flamingos, particle-physics art and a bonsai tree drifting on the edge of space. Please enjoy.

Supertyphoon from space

Sometime between 4 July and 7 July, tropical cyclone Neoguri turned into a supertyphoon over the western Pacific Ocean, with winds exceeding 240 kilometres an hour. This picture was taken from the International Space Station by German astronaut Alexander Gerst, who wrote: “Just went right above Supertyphoon Neoguri. It is ENORMOUS. Watch out, Japan!” Credit: ESA/NASA

Taking stock of flamingos

Flamingos flock to Fuente de Piedra lake in Spain to breed. This picture was taken on 19 July as researchers tagged chicks at the nature reserve. Credit: Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty

Flower power

In The GodParticleHuntingMachine_3.1 /Poppy#1 by Michael Hoch, a physicist at CERN, Europe’s particle physics centre near Geneva, Switzerland, a picture of poppies is interlaced with one of the facility's Compact Muon Solenoid detector. The image was one of a number of Hoch’s works on display at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Valencia, Spain, this month. Credit: Michael Hoch

Mapping Mars

A map of Mars, unveiled by cartographer Ken Tanaka of the US Geological Survey on 14 July. The image is “a culmination of more than a decade of probing the red planet’s geology and history with orbiters and rovers”, reported Nature's Alexandra Witze. Credit: USGS

Trees in space

Darwin's library

Siberian scan

Claws for thought

These terrifying metal claws were unearthed from a pre-Incan tomb in northern Peru earlier this year. They are thought to have been created by Moche civilization around 1,500 years ago. Credit: Luis Alvitres/PERU/Reuters/Corbis

Creating divisions