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Seeing a Ghost

A woodpecker feared extinct reappears in Arkansas

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Science Matters

The Institution decides to focus on four basic questions

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Fire in the Hole

Raging in mines from Pennsylvania to China, coal fires threaten towns, poison air and water, and add to global warming

A Martian meteorite fueled speculation and debate in 1996 when scientists reported that it held signs of past life. The search now moves to Mars itself.

Life on Mars?

It’s hard enough to identify fossilized microbes on Earth. How would we ever recognize them on Mars?

Friendly to whites most of his life, Mandan Chief Four Bears (in an 1832 portrait by George Catlin) turned bitter as death approached, blaming them for the disease that would kill him.

Tribal Fever

Twenty-five years ago this month, smallpox was officially eradicated. For the Indians of the high plains, it came a century and a half too late

Outdoor proceedings on July 20, 1925, showing William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow.

Evolution on Trial

Eighty years after a Dayton, Tennessee, jury found John Scopes guilty of teaching evolution, the citizens of “Monkeytown” still say Darwin’s for the birds

Doses of oral polio vaccine are added to sugar cubes for use in a 1967 vaccination campaign

Conquering Polio

Fifty years ago, a scientific panel declared Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine a smashing success. A new book takes readers behind the headlines

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Invention at Play

The Lemelson Center celebrates a decade of nurturing the inventor in each of us

Kicking off the Festival, NASA Deputy Administrator, the Honorable Shana Dale, shares lunch with the Prince of Bhutan, HRH Prince Jigyel Ugyen Wangchuck, and the acting head of the Smithsonian Institution, Cristian Samper.

Child of Wonder

Cristián Samper’s lifelong love of flora and fauna inspires creative new displays of the world’s largest collection

San Francisco in 1906.

Future Shocks

Modern science, ancient catastrophes and the endless quest to predict earthquakes

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A Puzzle In the Pribilofs

On the remote Alaskan archipelago, scientists and Aleuts are trying to find the causes of a worrisome decline in fur seals

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Invasion of the Snakeheads

The voracious “Frankenfish” has turned up in the Potomac River, Lake Michigan and a California lake, sparking fears of an ecological Armageddon

Bison do roam, up to tens of miles per day. Their ranging and even wallowing habits can shape plant and animal life on the prairie.

Back Home On The Range

When a group of Native Americans took up bison ranching, they brought a prairie back to life

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Our Adaptable Ancestors

Recent discoveries of skull fragments and tools testify to the resourcefulness of early humans

Greer's efforts have led to the arrest of 20 poachers (rangers apprehend a suspect in Dzanga-Ndoki National Park). Still, hunters continue to slaughter western lowland gorillas in the Congo basin.

Stop the Carnage

A pistol-packing American scientist puts his life on the line to reduce “the most serious threat to African wildlife”—

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Tiny Treasures

From mosquitoes to mementos, the smallest items in the Smithsonian’s collections can be the most useful

In his greenhouse, Ragan Callaway pits spotted knapweed plantings (left) against native Montana grasses (right), trying to outwit the weed's chemical weaponry.

Wicked Weed of the West

Spotted knapweed is driving out native plants and destroying rangeland, costing ranchers millions. Can anybody stop this outlaw?

Artist depiction of the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury

Being There

Robotic spacecraft allow geologists to explore other planets as if they were on-site

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Herd on the Street

In Anchorage, Alaska, you never know when a moose will show up on your doorstep

Trumpeter Swan, John James Audubon, 1838.

John James Audubon: America’s Rare Bird

The foreign-born frontiersman became one of the 19th century’s greatest wildlife artists and a hero of the ecology movement

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