The sun sets over the Susquehanna River in northern Pennsylvania.

America's Waterways: The Past, Present and Future

America’s Waterways: The Past, Present and Future

In a series of articles, Smithsonian magazine highlights all that draws our eyes to our nation’s fresh and coastal waters

A $25 million plan to uncover 1,100 feet of Jordan Creek and build three bridges is moving forward in Springfield, Missouri.

America's Waterways: The Past, Present and Future

How ‘Daylighting’ Buried Waterways Is Revitalizing Cities Across America

Urban centers are exhuming creeks and streams once covered up to control floodwater—and bringing life back in the process

Industrialization changed Italy’s Bagnoli Bay. Analyzing the DNA that was trapped in sediment offers a record of what was lost—and a clue as to how to get it back.

DNA Buried in Sediment Helps Scientists Picture Past Ecosystems

Examining the evidence offers a way to look back at now damaged environments

A male (silver) and female (brown) common European adder meet prior to mating. Scientists are just beginning to understand female sexual anatomy in snakes.

Why Did Scientists Wait So Long to Study the Snake Clitoris?

The delay is representative of a major problem in biology: Female and intersex animals are understudied compared with their male counterparts

Adam Driver stars in the new movie 65.

What Earth Would Have Really Looked Like in Adam Driver’s ‘65’

If you were to travel back in time you’d find a mix of the familiar and strange on our planet

The strategy an animal uses to track a scent depends upon a number of factors, including the animal’s body shape and the amount of turbulence in the odor plume.

Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out How Animals Follow a Scent to Its Source

Uncovering the varied strategies that animals employ could help engineers develop robots that accomplish similar tasks

Many animals like corals release eggs and sperm into the water on just the right nights of the month.

How Lunar Cycles Guide the Spawning of Sea Creatures

Researchers are starting to understand the biological rhythms that sync worms and corals to phases of the moon

A just-hatched chick stands next to its egg.

Why Newborn Chicks Love Objects That Defy Gravity

A clever new study shows the cute critters will often scuttle toward a video of a rising ball

After nearly 40 years, desert lions are once again hunting marine prey along Namibia’s Skeleton Coast, where scientists believed the knowledge had been lost.

In Namibia, Lions Are King of the Beach

As the big cats return to hunting fur seals on the Skeleton Coast, a new project tries to keep people out of the way

A father shows his son the awful-smelling algae hugging the shoreline of the St. Lucie River during a summer bloom in Stuart, Florida, in 2016. The algae fouled coastal waterways, created angry communities, closed beaches and had an economic impact as tourists and others were driven away by the smell and inability to enjoy the waterways.

Florida’s Love-Hate Relationship With Phosphorus

The state has mined and abused the Devil’s Element for decades, and now it is increasingly fouling precious coastal waters

Thousands of migratory birds, including snow geese, sandhill cranes and ducks make Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico their fall and winter home.

The Wonderful World of Birds

The Wonderful World of Birds

As the Smithsonian’s National Zoo prepares to open its reimagined and beloved Bird House, explore the fascinating science of our feathery friends above

Astronomers and musicians have developed “sonifications” to bring the symphony of the cosmos to a wider audience.

What Does the Universe Sound Like?

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and other researchers have melded astronomy and music to offer a new oeuvre

One standout feature of the renovated Bird House at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute is the chance for close-up, interactive experiences (above: a cedar waxwing).

The Wonderful World of Birds

Experience the Wonder of Migration at the National Zoo’s New Bird House

Following a six-year renovation, the revamped exhibition will open March 13 with three indoor aviaries

Untold tsunamis hit coastal communities before anyone logged them in written records. Paleotsunami researchers are on a quest to uncover these forgotten disasters.

These Tsunami Detectives Search for Ancient Disasters

The gigantic waves have been decimating coastlines since time immemorial. We ignore these prehistoric warnings at our own peril.

Two brothers’ remains were found buried together under the floorboards of their home. One had a hole in his skull consistent with surgery.

This Man Underwent Brain Surgery 3,500 Years Ago

Researchers discovered a punctured skull below the floor of a home in what is now Israel

Large-scale production of green hydrogen is seen as an alternative to the use of fossil fuels in the coming decades. Latin America is well-positioned to play a large part in this new industry and already has several projects in the works.

Can Green Hydrogen Help Power Latin America?

In anticipation of future demand, several projects are underway in the region to produce this clean energy source

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

Page 37 of 456