Recovery of baleen whales to pre-whaling levels could restore lost ocean function and may help curb climate change. New research co-authored by Nicholas Pyenson, curator of…
Earth’s Oldest Minerals Date Onset of Plate Tectonics to 3.6 Billion Years Ago Ancient zircons from the jack hills of western Australia hone date of…
Study of Himalayan songbirds in museum collections is first step toward using feathers to predict the effects of climate change for birds in extreme environments….
Three 2,000-year-old cobs in Honduras show that people brought corn varieties back to Mesoamerica, possibly sparking productivity and shaping civilization. Some 9,000 years ago, corn…
New drill core shows a boom-bust landscape in the east African rift valley at a defining moment in human evolution, technology and culture. For hundreds…
Packed pigment granules help them blend in without blowing their cover. If there were a stagehand of the sea, wearing black to disappear into the…
Ultra-black fish skin absorbs more than 99.5% of light in a new, extremely efficient way, a discovery that may advance high-tech optical and camouflage technology….
Jellyfish Can Sting Swimmers, Prey With “Mucus Grenades” Interdisciplinary research team discovers, describes new free-floating jellyfish stinging structures. In warm coastal waters around the world,…
We can now listen to audio-recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell 130 years ago. These audio recordings were stored at the Smithsonian Institution for over…
According to Smithsonian researchers, the brains of tiny spiders are so large that they fill their body cavities and even overflow into their legs. They…