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GRAND PRIZE WINNER Young monks from Myanmar Bagan, Myanmar • Photographed April 2007 Winn traveled north from his home in Yangon to the countryside of old Bagan to capture this image of young Buddhist monks in the Shwesandaw Temple. “I found them lighting candles and praying,” Winn says. “You can see monks everywhere in Myanmar.”

7th Annual Photo Contest Winners and Finalists

See the winning photos from our 2009 contest

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New Sauropod From Dinosaur National Monument Gets a Name

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Events: Saving Our Oceans, Looking Forward to New Museums, Marilyn Monroe and More!

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A Whale of a Carbon Sink

Ardi (right) lived in a forest in Africa. Her fossil skeleton shows that she walked upright and yet had an opposable toe, good for climbing trees.

The Human Family’s Earliest Ancestors

Studies of hominid fossils, like 4.4-million-year-old “Ardi,” are changing ideas about human origins

Scientists have been descending on the Alaska city of Barrow since 1973. This monument made of whale bones is to lost sailors.

Anthropocene

Barrow, Alaska: Ground Zero for Climate Change

Scientists converge on the northernmost city in the United States to study global warming’s dramatic consequences

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Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Pollinating crickets, the longest migration, puffed up toads and more…

Esther Renee Adams, "Mamaw," was laid to rest in her own home. In the mountains of eastern Kentucky, such "country wakes" could last for days.

Capturing Appalachia’s “Mountain People”

Shelby Lee Adams’ 1990 photograph of life in the eastern Kentucky mountains captured a poignant tradition

Pho being served at the Spice Garden Buffet at the Sofitel Metropole in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Searching for Hanoi’s Ultimate Pho

With more Americans sampling Vietnam’s savory soup, a noted food critic and an esteemed maestro track down the city’s best

Horses brought by Spanish explorers in the 16th century bore a dark stripe along the spine, a feature that marks some mustangs today.

The Mustang Mystique

Descended from animals brought by Spanish conquistadors centuries ago, wild horses roam the West. But are they running out of room?

"For residents of the area who have gone to live elsewhere, it's the canal—so deep-set in what appears to be solid rock ... that resurfaces in dreams," says Oates.

Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again

The celebrated writer returns to the town of her birth to revisit the places that haunt her memory and her extraordinary fiction

Some of the best beer in Europe—and some of its most enthusiastic beer drinkers—can be found in Prague.

Czech Beer

The Czechs invented Pilsner-style lager, but be sure to venture beyond this famous beer

Locals know to hold their nose when enjoying the stinky cheese of Olomouc.

Stinky Cheese in Olomouc

A fine daytrip from Prague, the Czech Republic’s fourth-largest city offers more than just famous cheese

Homo heidelbergensis—one of five sculptures crafted for the new exhibition hall at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History—takes shape at a Baltimore foundry.

Sculpting Evolution

A series of statues by sculptor John Gurche brings us face to face with our early ancestors

The new hall at the Natural History Museum explains our ancestral tree.

From the Castle: Becoming Us

Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Natural History Museum, proposed that climate change was the driving force in human evolution.

Q and A: Rick Potts

The Smithsonian anthropologist turned heads when he proposed that climate change was the driving force in human evolution

Ongoing studies of Neanderthal skeletons unearthed in Iraq during the 1950s suggest the existence of a more complex social structure than previously thought.

The Skeletons of Shanidar Cave

A rare cache of hominid fossils from the Kurdistan area of northern Iraq offers a window on Neanderthal culture

The five-foot-wide Tata Nano car is on view at the Cooper-Hewitt until April 25.

What’s Up

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Letters

Readers Respond to the January Issue

For every hybrid sport that gets the Olympic seal of approval, there are dozens of others languishing in obscurity.

Hybrid Sports in a League of Their Own

From underwater hockey to chess boxing, could these unheralded hybrid sports be ready for prime time?

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