Kandula frolicking with mother Shanthi at the National Zoo at 8 months.

Great Expectations

Elephant researchers believe they can boost captive-animal reproduction rates and reverse a potential population crash in zoos

Indicating that Neanderthals buried their dead, a stone-lined pit in southwest France held the 70,000-year-old remains of a man wrapped in bearskin. The illustration is based on a diorama at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Rethinking Neanderthals

Research suggests they fashioned tools, buried their dead, maybe cared for the sick and even conversed. But why, if they were so smart, did they disappear?

Naturalist and writer Burroughs (above, left, with conservationist Muir) fretted that he was "the most ignorant man" aboard ship.

North to Alaska

In 1899, railroad magnate Edward Harriman invited preeminent scientists in America to join him on a working cruise to Alaska, then largely unexplored

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True or False? Extinction Is Forever

Researchers’ efforts to clone the vanished Tasmanian tiger highlight the quandary of reviving long-gone creatures

Margaret Mead

Coalition of the Differing

It took Margaret Mead to understand the two nations separated by a common language

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Mystery Bumps

Scientists knew that alligators’ jaws are covered in bumps but it took biologist Daphne Soares to figure out why

Having stopped a mother bear with a tranquilizer dart shot from the helicopter, Derocher (with Andersen, left, and Instanes, on Spitsbergen Island) tethers the cubs and takes tissue samples to gauge the mother's exposure to industrial chemicals like PCBs.

Bear Trouble

Only hundreds of miles from the North Pole, industrial chemicals threaten the Arctic’s greatest predator

Bringing Up Baby

Scientists zero in on the caring and cunning ways of a seldom-seen waterbird

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The Stuff of Genes

Fifty years after the discovery of DNA’s structure, the payoff hasn’t matched the hype. But really, we’ve only just begun

MODIS image of the Arctic

Exotic Climes

Going the extra mile for bears and bats

A 6-year-old girl played with the radioactive material, coating her hands with the cesium dust while eating.

The Hunt for Hot Stuff

In the former Soviet Union, “rad rangers” are racing to find lost radiation devices before terrorists can turn them into “dirty bombs”

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Ice Capades

Alaska’s husband-and-wife team of avalanche experts work to save lives all winter, then take to their kayaks in summer

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To the Rescue

Las Vegas showman Jonathan Kraft went from riches to rags to turn a patch of Arizona desert into a refuge for abused and abandoned exotic animals

9-planet solar system

Caution, Planets Ahead

The world’s largest (maybe) 9-planet solar system model goes up along Route 1 in northern Maine

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Just Looking: Sweet Sorrow

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Testimony from the Iceman

The 5,000-plus-year-old Neolithic man discovered a decade ago is telling scientists how he lived and died

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Mission Impossible?

An international campaign to rid the world of polio has made dazzling progress. But some experts question whether the scourge can ever be eradicated

Over the past 20 years, a significant decline in the smallmouth bass population of a much cleaner Lake Ontario has coincided with an explosion in cormorant numbers.

Shoot-out at Little Galloo

Angry fishermen accuse the cormorant of ruining their livelihood and have taken the law into their own hands. But is the cormorant to blame?

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Iceberg Wrangler

When a million-ton iceberg threatens your $5 billion oil platform, who you gonna call? Jerome Baker

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Sea Searchers

Scientists launch a $1 billion effort to track marine life worldwide

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