Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Science

Stories of the enslaved people who helped kick-start paleontology and the Native American guides who led naturalists to fossils around the continent have long been suppressed.

The First Fossil Finders in North America Were Enslaved and Indigenous People

Decades before paleontology’s formal establishment, Black and Native Americans discovered—and correctly identified—millennia-old fossils

Purple martins perch on a branch in the Brazilian Amazon.

The Wonderful World of Birds

Why Are Purple Martins Declining in the United States?

Mercury contamination in their Amazonian wintering grounds may play a role

The lizards likely reached the islands by hitching a ride on logs, vegetation or other debris, and diverged from their terrestrial cousins some 4.5 million years ago.

Behold: The Galápagos’ Marine Iguana

This quirky icon of evolution faces a rocky future

Wesley Miles, a Pima archaeologist, points out that the placement of this new canal parallel to a prehistoric channel “says something about our ancestors’ engineering skills.”

America's Waterways: The Past, Present and Future

This Native American Tribe Is Taking Back Its Water

With a new state-of-the-art irrigation project, Arizona’s Pima Indians are transforming their land into what it once was: the granary of the Southwest

Whales are tricky to see from a satellite. Belugas, with their light skin standing out against the water, are a bit easier to spot.

Can Satellites Really Detect Whales From Space?

Distant identification of whales is improving rapidly, but finding the behemoth creatures is still surprisingly tricky

Íris Dröfn Guðmundsdóttir (left) and her cousin Anton Ingi Eiríksson release pufflings from the Hamarinn sea cliff on the Icelandic island of Heimaey.

Northern Europe and the British Isles

An Icelandic Town Goes All Out to Save Baby Puffins

Kids and senior citizens alike rally to rescue beloved young seabirds that have lost their bearings

McClintock used this Bausch & Lomb wide-field binocular microscope to examine morphological mutations in corn.

Women in Science

By Studying Corn, Barbara McClintock Unlocked the Secrets of Life

A look through a historic microscope helps explain what we all owe the Nobel Prize-winning scientist

A fossil hippo skeleton and associated Oldowan artifacts were exposed at the Nyayanga site.

Who Made the First Stone Tool Kits?

A nearly three-million-year-old butchering site packed with animal bones, stone implements and molars from our early ancestors reignites the debate

A female (left) and male (right) golden-shouldered parrot

The Wonderful World of Birds

Australia’s Most Endangered Parrot Faces an Unusual Threat: Trees

Native vegetation blocks the birds’ ability to see approaching predators

The cabbage soup diet of the 1950s allowed the indulgence in as much cabbage soup as one could consume.

The Seesawing History of Fad Diets

Since dieting began in the 1830s, the ever-changing nutritional advice has skimped on science

Over several decades, researchers have identified more than 140 active compounds, called cannabinoids, in the cannabis plant. 

The Scientific History of Cannabinoids

Hundreds of these cannabis-related chemicals, both natural and synthetic, now exist, and researchers want to know how they can hurt and help us

Pueblo Bonito, a massive stone great house in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico

How Should Scientists Navigate the Ethics of Ancient Human DNA Research?

Paleogenomic research has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, igniting heated debate about studying remains

Large felids such as lions and tigers cause more deaths than other predators like bears and wolves. Most fatal felid attacks occur in low-income areas and are predatory, with humans stalked as prey.

What 70 Years of Data Says About Where Predators Kill Humans

A new survey of attacks by lions, wolves and other big carnivores shows that people in low-income countries are at greater risk

A meteor streaks across the sky near Lone Pine, California, during the annual Perseid meteor shower in 2022.

Ten Dazzling Celestial Events to See in 2023

Stargazers can look forward to watching a rare comet, a super blue moon and several spectacular meteor showers

Miriam Wosk's illustration of a blue-skinned, eight-armed multitasking woman adorned the first cover of Ms. magazine. "Making her blue was a way of making her universal," says Gloria Steinem in this month's "Portraits" podcast.

Explore the Founding of ‘Ms.’ Magazine and the Making of a Space Telescope Photograph in This Month’s Featured Podcasts

“AirSpace” speaks to astronomer Shauna Edson and “Portraits” drops in on activist and author Gloria Steinhem

NASA has 42 current astronauts to select from for a possible mission to the moon.

How NASA Is Selecting the Next Astronauts to Walk on the Moon

The space agency has said that it will send the first woman and the first person of color to the lunar surface

An artist’s reconstruction of Ignacius dawsonae surviving in the warm but dark forests of Ellesmere Island

Primate-Like Critters Survived in the Arctic When It Was a Lush, Warm Swamp

Even as darkness gripped the forests for months, two small species made it home

Saliva impacts how different foods taste.

How Saliva Changes the Flavor of Food

The liquid impacts how we perceive taste and can influence what we choose to eat

The new solar panels would filter light more efficiently.

Farmers May Not Have to Choose Between Crops and Solar Panels

With a new photovoltaic panel, researchers harness sunshine to harvest energy and food together, taking advantage of the full light spectrum

About 100 miles northwest of Mexico City in the UNESCO-designated Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, up to a billion of the brilliant-winged insects spend November to March clustered on branches.

A Ring of Fire, Millions of Monarchs and Other Rare Natural Phenomena Worth Traveling For

Be in the right place at the right time to witness these sublime sights

Page 40 of 458