The Baby Nager dragon, from DreamWorks’ new “How to Train Your Dragon” Live Spectacular touring musical, shows off it’s colors outside of the New York Public Library. (Photo by Mark Von Holden)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

This picture taken on May 21, 2016 shows professional wrestlers fighting each other during the Wrestling City Asia organized by Singapore Pro Wrestling at a stadium in Kuala Lumpur. Kenneth Thexeira is a mild-mannered writer for an interior-design magazine by day, but on certain nights his alter ego bursts forth in golden tights and a baby-blue cape: enter “The Eurasian Dragon”. (Photo by Mohd Rasfan/AFP Photo)

Children eat watermelons to meet the “beginning of autumn” at a kindergarten in Handan, China on August 7, 2015. Chinese tradition to eat watermelons or peaches before that day symbolises “biting away summer”. The solar term ‘beginning of autumn’ falls on 8 August this year. (Photo by Xinhua/REX Shutterstock)

Cemetery workers lift a corpse from a coffin to a metal plate as they prepare the body for cremation at a cemetery in Maracaibo, Venezuela, November 27, 2019. Some overcome the financial burden of a relative's death by renting caskets, a cheaper option than buying one. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

A woman wears a scuba mask and a surgical mask as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus, while buying food in a popular market in Lima, Peru, Monday, March 23, 2020. The vast majority of people recover from the COVID-19 disease. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)

Police officers block a road as lava rises following the eruption of a volcano on the Island of La Palma, in Tacande, Spain on September 22, 2021. (Photo by Borja Suarez/Reuters)

Participants celebrate the awakening of the Hoppeditz, a fictional character whose return to life marks the start of the carnival season in Düsseldorf, western Germany on November 11, 2021. The 11.11. is celebrated this year again under Corona conditions in presence. However, in the carnival strongholds of Cologne and Düsseldorf, this only applies to the vaccinated and the recovered. (Photo by Federico Gambarini/dpa/Alamy Live News)