Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Science

None

Smithsonian Voices

Smithsonian Paleontologist Hans Sues Is Taking Your Questions About Dinos, Humans and Even, Cats

Smithsonian’s new YouTube series, “The Dr. Is In.”

A partially exposed, 65-million-year-old fish from the Tanis deposit in North Dakota.

Fossil Site May Capture the Dinosaur-Killing Impact, but It’s Only the Beginning of the Story

The Tanis site in North Dakota contains evidence of the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs

Typical Tiwanaku-period offerings at Khoa Reef in Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, including stone carvings and sacrificial animal bones.

Before the Inca Ruled South America, the Tiwanaku Left Their Mark on the Andes

Artifacts including gold medallions and sacrificial llama bones reveal the ritual pilgrimages taken around Lake Titicaca

This moth specimen was mistakenly identified as a butterfly in 1793, leaving biologists to wonder what happened to the missing "butterfly" for more than 200 years.

One of the ‘Rarest Butterflies Ever’ May Have Been a Moth All Along

A species description from more than two centuries ago has fooled scientists until now

An illustration of Crawford Long removing a tumor from the neck of James Venable.

How Ether Went From a Recreational ‘Frolic’ Drug to the First Surgery Anesthetic

Before ether was used as an anesthetic in surgery, doctors relied on less effective techniques for pain relief, such as hypnosis

Colors in nature can be produced by both pigments that absorb some light and microscopic structures that change the wavelength of light.

How Do Scientists Know What Colors Prehistoric Animals Were?

Fossil expert Maria McNamara explains how paleontologists are starting to investigate the hues of the past

Roxie Laybourne's work changed the role of museums in public life by turning the Smithsonian’s collection of thousands of birds into an applied science tool.

Meet Roxie Laybourne, the Feather Detective Who Changed Aviation

A new Sidedoor episode tells the story of Roxy Laybourne, a Smithsonian scientist who pioneered the field of forensic ornithology

Jennifer Levasseur from the National Air and Space Museum notes that the museum’s supply of popular astronaut foods is less comprehensive than its collection of rejects. “We only get what they didn’t eat (above: Apollo 17's spiced fruit cereal is now in the collections)."

Rita Rapp Fed America’s Space Travelers

NASA’s food packages now in the collections of the Air and Space Museum tell the story of how a physiologist brought better eating to outer space

An artist's concept of the Axel rover rappelling into a lunar pit.

NASA Considers a Rover Mission to Go Cave Diving on the Moon

The deep caverns and pits that dot the lunar surface could hold clues to the moon’s history and perhaps provide shelter for future human exploration

River basin map of the contiguous United States

Art Meets Science

These Beautiful Maps Capture the Rivers That Pulse Through Our World

Cartographer Robert Szucs creates colorful maps of the watersheds that creep across states, countries, continents and the globe

One way of distinguishing these zebras from one another? Their stripes

The High-Tech, Humane Ways Biologists Can Identify Individual Animals

Humans have driver’s licenses and fingerprints, but cows have nose-prints and zebras have “StripeCodes”

Keepers suspect that the mother might already be pregnant with a second.

Is That Wallaby Sprouting a Second Head?

Last week, the first baby wallaby to be born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo in three decades poked its head out of its mother’s pouch

The Cambrian Period was a time of remarkable diversification of life when many of the animal groups that exist today first appear in the fossil record.

Fossil Treasure Trove of Ancient Animals Unearthed in China

The fossils from the Cambrian Period include dozens of new species and provide a window into life more than 500 million years ago

Despite statistical methods that help sports fans improve their brackets, the probability of a perfect bracket remains something of a mystery in mathematics.

The Mathematical Madness Behind a Perfect N.C.A.A. Basketball Bracket

Picking a perfect bracket is so unlikely that it will almost certainly never occur, even if March Madness continues for billions of years

Dragons in Chinese art represent the emperor.

What Do Dragons Symbolize and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

In a feat of surgical skill, Denton Cooley attached the temporary artificial heart device in only 47 minutes.

The Rivalry Between Two Doctors to Implant the First Artificial Heart

Featuring titans of Texas medicine, the race was on to develop the cutting-edge technology

The Holy Fire at Lake Elsinore, California, when only about five percent of the fire was contained, August 9, 2018.

Untangling the Physics Behind Drifting Embers, ‘Firenadoes’ and Other Wildfire Phenomena

Fires can leap rapidly from building to building and even cause extreme weather events such as pyrocumulonimbus storm clouds

Fingerprinting became widespread in the early 20th century.

The Myth of Fingerprints

Police today increasingly embrace DNA tests as the ultimate crime-fighting tool. They once felt the same way about fingerprinting

None

Smithsonian Voices

The Dr. Is In: Cat-loving Paleontologist Answers Your Questions in New YouTube Series

Paleontologist Hans Sues answers your questions about dinosaurs, humans and cats in the Smithsonian’s new YouTube series, “The Dr. Is In.”

Exterior view of the entrance of Fa-Hien Lena cave in Sri Lanka, where archaeological evidence suggests humans lived about 45,000 years ago.

Ancient Monkey Bone Tools Shake Up the Narrative of Early Human Migration to the Rain Forest

New evidence pushes back the date for human settlement in jungles, challenging the idea that our ancestors preferred the savannas and plains

Page 108 of 457