Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Science

None

Squirrelologist

None

Wild Things: Life as We Know It

Gray seals, alligators and the world’s largest flower

Although Brazil protected indigenous territories in the 1980s, many miners and loggers ignore Native boundaries; they see cultural mapping as a threat.

Rain Forest Rebel

In the Amazon, researchers documenting the ways of native peoples join forces with a chief to stop illegal developers from destroying the wilderness

Sometime after 1938, a forger, perhaps oblivious to the document's historic nature, tried to boost its value by painting Byzantine-style illuminations on a few of its pages.

Reading Between the Lines

Scientists with high-tech tools are deciphering lost writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes

Pallid sturgeons, which can reach six feet long and live 60 years, flourished for eons in murky American waters.

Curtains for the Pallid Sturgeon

Can biologists breed the “Dinosaurs of the Missouri” fast enough to stave off their extinction?

None

DeLorean Tremens

Hold onto your flux capacitors, time machines have nearly arrived

Cowbirds (a male, above) "are more highly evolved than we previously thought," says Jeff Hoover.

Wiseguys with Wings

“Mafia” cowbirds muscle warblers into raising their young

"If global warming's worst predictions come true in 100 years," says Fabio Carrera, "the real issue is preserving Venice as a liveable place—not stopping the occasional tide from coming in."

Venice’s Uncertainty

A new floodgate system should protect the city from high tides—unless climate change interferes

Roald Amundsen and his crew looking at the Norwegian flag at the South Pole, 1911

Antarctica’s Lost & Found Dept.

A Space-Time Anomaly of Matter-Energy Reactions

None

Planet — well, Forest — of the Apes

IKEA’s $.05 Campaign to Save the Environment

None

Scannable Birds? New DNA Barcodes Classify Nature

Chart showing the increase in autism diagnosis

Aut Couture

None

The Good News Is Fewer Than 1/3 Of Us Know Basic Science

For The Birds

None

Tool Time

None

They Came For The Martians, And I Was Silent Because I Was Not A Martian

None

Seeds Kept Safe in Arctic Circle Vault

Corn is the main feedstock used for producing ethanol fuel in the United States.

Finding Alternatives to Bush’s Alternative Fuels

Page 428 of 457