A Secret Code Shapes All Life, Scientists Say. But This Ancient Fossil Refused to Follow It.
This 407-million-year-old species of clubmoss doesn’t follow the Fibonacci sequence like most of its living relatives. Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The majority…
She Was Half Ape, Half Human—and She May Hold the Secret to What Makes Us Who We Are
In this 4.4-million-year-old skeleton, scientists may have found the missing step between climbing and walking. Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if…
The River Dropped — and Handed Back a 40-Foot Oak Boat
For centuries it lay hidden under the water of the Styr, in Ukraine, wrapped in dark peat and silence. Then the river fell to an unusually low…
Entire Carbonized Herculaneum Scroll Virtually Unwrapped
NAPLES, ITALY—Scientists have fully “unwrapped” an entire carbonized papyrus scroll preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, CNN reports. Known as PHerc. 1667, the scroll is one…
Transforming the Enchanted Isles
There is perhaps no place on Earth that better symbolizes the majesty of a world unmarred by human encroachment than the Galapagos Islands. The remote archipelago lies along…
This Isn’t Egypt. It’s Louisiana — and It’s Older Than the Roman Empire
More than three thousand years ago, long before Rome existed, people in what is now northeastern Louisiana built a city of enormous earthen ridges and mounds —…
The Place Where the Earth Splits Open: Standing Inside the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
There is a valley in Iceland where you can do something that sounds impossible: walk down into a crack between two continents. On one side, North America….
The Place Where the Earth Splits Open: Standing Inside the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
There is a valley in Iceland where you can do something that sounds impossible: walk down into a crack between two continents. On one side, North America….
The $100 Million Lucky Charm Under the Bed
For ten years, a fisherman in the Philippines slept above a fortune and never knew it. Beneath his bed, wrapped and half-forgotten, sat a heavy, strange lump…
Ammonites: The Spiral Fossils That Swam With the Dinosaurs
You have probably seen one without knowing what you were looking at: a stone coiled into a perfect spiral, sitting on a shelf or sold at a…