Phenomena & Curiosities

At the Mbad African Bead Museum in Detroit, Obscura Day visitors can see beads almost 400 years old.

Urban Explorations

This Obscura Day, Discover the Curiosities in Your Own Backyard

Creepy dolls, KGB secrets and unexpected pinball troves—media startup Atlas Obscura invites readers to explore their own hometowns on May 30

Considered a mere scavenger that robbed traps and ransacked cabins, the wolverine has recently earned respect and scientific attention.

The Way of the Wolverine

After all but disappearing, the mammals are again being sighted in Washington's Cascade Range

A 19th-century print of New Madrid earthquake chaos.

The Great Midwest Earthquake of 1811

Two hundred years ago, a series of powerful temblors devastated what is now Missouri. Could it happen again?

Resembling a protective amulet, the Tibetan bunting charms Tashi Zangpo and the other monks he has trained.

A Buddhist Monk Saves One of the World's Rarest Birds

High in the Himalayas, the Tibetan bunting is getting help from a very special friend

Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell deciphers the ultrasonic chatter, shown here plotted on a spectrograph, of a deer mouse.

The Mystery of the Singing Mice

A scientist has discovered that high-pitched sounds made by the small rodents could actually be melodious songs

The Gulf catastrophe will have far-reaching effects, which scientists have only begun to study.

A Crude Awakening in the Gulf of Mexico

Scientists are just beginning to grasp how profoundly oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill has devastated the region

When some turtles swim south in the fall, scores of them get trapped by Cape Cod, where many die of hypothermia.

Saving the World's Most Endangered Sea Turtle

Stranded on Cape Cod beaches, these Kemp's ridley turtles are getting a helping hand from volunteers and researchers

The NASA mission, called Stardust, brought back the only material—other than moon rocks—taken directly from a extraterrestrial body.

The Secrets Within Cosmic Dust

Dust captured by a spacecraft from a comet's tail holds clues to the origin of the solar system

The rich fossil repository known as the Burgess Shale was first discovered a century ago.

The Burgess Shale: Evolution's Big Bang

A storied trove of fossils from a Canadian paleontological site is yielding new clues to an explosion of life on earth

The remains of a forest of lycopsids and other oddities is 230 feet underground (John Nelson, left, and Scott Elrick inspect a mine shaft ceiling rich in fossils.)

The World's Largest Fossil Wilderness

An Illinois coal mine holds a snapshot of life on earth 300 million years ago, when a massive earthquake "froze" a swamp in time

Angel Watkins and co-workers in Colorado blame many culprits in the decline of the Aspen.

What's Killing the Aspen?

The signature tree of the Rockies is in trouble

The Cassowary bird at Lahore Zoo.

Invasion of the Cassowaries

Passions run high in an Australian town: Should the endangered birds be feared—or fed?

Pseudoryx nghetinhensis Saola (aka Vu Quang ox) 4 - 5 month old female at the Forest Inventory & Planning Institute Botanical Garden. Hanoi, Vietnam

A Wildlife Mystery in Vietnam

The discovery of the saola alerted scientists to the strange diversity of Southeast Asia's threatened forests

Brontosaurus skeleton sketch

Where Dinosaurs Roamed

Footprints at one of the nation's oldest—and most fought over—fossil beds offer new clues to how the behemoths lived

Two Bighorn rams

Tracking the Bighorns

Where do the elusive mountain climbers go? Researchers have finally learned some answers

Bright idea: Wolfgang Ketterle (in his M.I.T lab) hopes to discover new forms of matter by studying ultracold atoms.

The Coldest Place in the Universe

Physicists in Massachusetts come to grips with the lowest possible temperature: absolute zero

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Abandoned Ship: The Mary Celeste

What really happened aboard the <i>Mary Celeste</i>? More than a century after her crew went missing, a scenario is emerging

Coyotes in densely populated areas (a Los Angeles suburb) can be alarming. But wildlife experts say they fill a niche in the urban ecology.

City Slinkers

Why are coyotes, those cunning denizens of the plains and rural west, moving into urban centers like Chicago and Washington DC?

A Matter of Taste

Are you a superstar? Just stick out your tongue and say "yuck"

A Bumpy Road to Mars

The president envisions a future human mission to Mars, but medical researchers say surviving the journey is no spacewalk

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