Watch adventurous tourists conquer their fears as they navigate the rocky rapids of Australia's Tully River.

Fossils of a stegodon and a host of other mammals found in a Thai rice field could offer clues to prehistoric animal and human migrations in Asia.

Are humans to blame for deadly disease outbreaks among chimpanzees in Africa? Join researchers in Tanzania as they investigate if tourists are carrying illnesses into the wild.

Researchers say they have traced the diets and migration patterns of elephants in Kenya by examining the hair at the tips of their tails.

Spirits are high at NASA as the Mars exploration rover Spirit passes its two-year anniversary and its sister craft Opportunity prepares to do the same.

The strength of a unique bond between a young hippo and a 130-year-old tortoise will be tested later this spring when conservationists introduce a female hippo to the mix.

Evidence of Maya writing that dates to 2,300 years ago—possibly the oldest Maya writing discovered—has turned up in ruins in Guatemala, scientists report.

The return of a top predator in a Bahamas marine reserve is proving to be unexpectedly beneficial to the coral reef it calls home, a new study says.

Cutting down the last remaining trees greatly reduces some burned forests' ability to bounce back, a new study says.

Visit one of the largest dog resorts in the nation and see how pampered pooches in the U.S. enjoy a day at the spa.

The existence of ghosts may be debated. But the impact of traditional Asian beliefs on Thailand's tourism trade since the December 26, 2004, tsunami appears indisputable.

A study of ancient cemeteries in North America suggests that a prehistoric baby boom swept the continent about 2,500 years ago, just as farming was taking root.

Researchers say they failed to prove whether a skull locked in an Austrian museum since 1902 belongs to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Island fishers in Thailand are opening their homes to tourists to showcase their culture and claim ownership of their island's tourist trade.

Join conservationist Zeb Hogan as he goes in search of the world's largest freshwater fish—Southeast Asia's giant catfish—and explore his efforts to bring it back from the brink of extinction.

A new program in Cambodia aims to save the giant catfish—the largest freshwater fish in the world—from extinction.

Most modern Indians descended from South Asians, not invading Central Asian steppe dwellers, a new genetic study reports.

Ants teach their younger kin how to find a food stash, a behavior that could be the first known example of a teacher-pupil relationship in a nonhuman animal, researchers report.

Stealing a last, long-lashed glance in Pakistan, a festively attired camel has a key role in the Muslim feast of sacrifice.

Researchers say they have solved an 11-million-year-old puzzle: how a single feline-like ancestor in Asia developed into the world's 37 living cat species.

A small, furry, fossilized animal discovered in China resembles a hybrid of modern and prehistoric mammals, experts say, providing important clues to mammal evolution.

Snuppy really is the world's first cloned dog. But Korean scientist Woo Suk Hwang faked human embryo clone and stem cell research, an investigation confirms.

Grasses and other green growth may produce 10 to 30 percent of Earth's annual methane output, a new study reports.

Dogs can detect if someone has cancer just by sniffing their breath, a new study shows.

The die-off of harlequin frog species in Central and South America is the result of a deadly fungus spurred by global warming, a new study suggests.

Find out the many roles a geisha is expected to play, and why some modern Japanese women still chose this ancient, arduous profession.

About 1.8 billion years ago, a meteorite or comet the size of Mount Everest slammed into Earth, turned part of the crust inside out, and dusted the surface with a rare metal.

If beauty is in the details, here's one of the most beautiful pictures ever. The Hubble telescope has made a supersharp image that sheds new light on star birth.

It's been 20 years since Alaskans have felt its rumble or the grit of its ash, but Augustine Volcano has roared back to life.

Geneticists monitoring Turkey's bird flu outbreak say the virus has mutated, but the change poses no added threat.

If lobsters could talk (which they can't, of course), "Smell you later" and "I smell trouble" would be common expressions. A lobster expert explains why.

The practice of removing mountaintops to mine coal is polarizing opinion in Appalachia.

Older than life as we know it, comet dust collected by the NASA capsule may shed light on our solar system's origins.

Related Video: Mission Overview

As the NASA craft blazes back to Earth, relive its pioneering mission via stunning animation and expert interviews.

Preserved hair from an ancient murder victim found in an Irish peat bog contains a substance that experts say could be the first known Iron Age hair gel.

Its rhythms may have originated in Africa, but the Caribbean's iconic instrument arose when musicians on Trinidad and Tobago began making music with oil barrels.

A phenomenon known as the urban heat-island effect can bump up energy costs in the summer and can even cause cities to create their own weather, a NASA expert says.

The bodies of two Iron Age murder victims have been recovered from peat bogs in Ireland. Experts say one man used hair gel in a likely bid to appear taller.

NASA postponed until Wednesday the planned launch of its New Horizons spacecraft, which is set to embark on a nine-year, three-billion-mile journey to Pluto.

Officials aren't sure what has killed more than 65 percent of the wolf pups born last year in Yellowstone National Park, but experts suspect a common dog virus is to blame.

A collector has unveiled a map that he says proves a Chinese explorer discovered America more than 70 years before Christopher Columbus set foot in the New World.

Synchronized swimming in tight formations might help wild dolphins listen in on one another's mapping and foraging, according to a recent study.

For the second consecutive day, NASA postponed the planned launch of its nine-year, three-billion-mile mission to Pluto.

Rising sea-surface temperatures are harming the reproductive success of right whales in the southern Atlantic, researchers say.

Mundurucú Indians have a seemingly natural understanding of geometry concepts, even though their language doesn't have words for them, a new study says.

Clues found at the site of the doomed Jamestown colony may reveal a saga more intriguing than Hollywood's The New World. Join scientists as they unravel the true story of Jamestown.

Japanese waters have been inundated with massive Nomura's jellyfish, which can grow 6.5 feet (2 meters) wide and weigh up to 450 pounds (220 kilograms).

After a string of weather-related delays, NASA successfully launched its New Horizons spacecraft, sending it on a ten-year mission to Pluto and beyond.

A new brain imaging study reveals that we empathize when good people suffer, but that men in particular like to see cheaters get punished.

Space around Earth is filling up with human-made debris, adding risk to human and robotic space missions. Experts say it's time to collect large pieces of old junk.

Scientists say they're thrilled and awed by their first glimpse at the space-particle samples returned by the Stardust spacecraft.

Recycle your cell phone, save the gorillas. It may not be as simple as that, but a program spotlights the link between cell phones and the survival of African gorillas.

As many as three million men living today may be descended from a fifth-century Irish warlord known as Niall of the Nine Hostages, geneticists say.

To accurately recreate 17th-century sights and sounds, the director turned to linguist Blair Rudes to reconstruct a language that no one had spoken for about 200 years.

Spewing ash miles into the sky this week, Alaska's Augustine Volcano is just one of the 18 most dangerous in the U.S., according to a recent government report.

Archaeologists working in the mountains of North Carolina are uncovering new details about the forced relocation of 16,000 Cherokee in the 1830s.

A recently unveiled map purporting to show that a Chinese explorer discovered America in 1418 has been met with skepticism from cartographers and historians alike.

Stranded in London, a young whale captivated the world this weekend. After dying aboard a barge Saturday, her body is now undergoing an autopsy.

Pennsylvania hunters may soon be using a Stone Age spear-throwing weapon known as the atlatl to stalk deer.

Could Washington, D.C., end up where San Francisco is now? Not anytime soon, but a new report says continents are being pulled westward by the moon's gravity.

Fresh from hosting the Summer Olympics, Athens looked more like a Winter Games venue yesterday.

After languishing for decades in a New York museum, a dinosaur-era two-footed crocodile relative is seeing the light—and shedding secrets.

The bottlenose whale that swam into central London last week died from dehydration and other factors, autopsy results suggest. The whale lost her way while hunting squid.

Fossil remains of animal prey in the republic of Georgia suggest Neandertals were more intelligent and resourceful than scientists previously thought.

By cracking the bird-flu genetic code, scientists have added to the arsenal against the virus—and uncovered a secret of its deadliness.

Current corn-ethanol production technologies are far less petroleum-intensive than gasoline, though both fuels have similar greenhouse gas emissions, scientists say.

Restrictions on imports of caviar from the Caspian Sea could stimulate the harvest of eggs from fish in American rivers.

Astronomers say they have discovered the most Earthlike planet ever detected outside our solar system, adding that our galaxy may be full of planets conducive to life.

Glowing ropes, robots, and virtual reality may be the next canaries in the coal mines—devices that may address problems responsible for recent disasters.

To follow the movements of cougars in remote areas of western North America, a team of biologists has found a different kind of tracking device: a virus that's the feline equivalent of HIV.

To thwart otters and other predators, Tanzania puffer fish employ some "Puff Daddy" defenses that can make the fish too much of a mouthful to be meal.

Spacecraft, heal thyself. Mixing materials science with a few ideas from medicine, aerospace engineers are developing self-repairing materials that "heal" themselves when damaged.

It's a first: Hawaii's endangered Kauai cave wolf spider has never been caught carrying its young (drumroll, please) until now.

Crammed into trunks and pockets, puppies too sick or young to survive on their own are being sold for up to a thousand dollars each in California parking lots.

It may be tiny, but this fish has sparked a debate that's big—though nowhere near as ugly.

NASA's THOR mission may blast an enormous crater on Mars in the hopes of unearthing evidence of water ice in the red planet's potentially habitable zones.

In a hangar near an Ohio cornfield stands a prototype airship—part plane, part blimp—that its creators hope will usher in a new transportation era.

Skeletons unearthed in a centuries-old burial ground in Mexico could be the earliest remains of African slaves in the New World, scientists report.

A teenage girl who died two weeks ago tested positive yesterday for the H5N1 strain of the virus, making her the first bird flu victim in the war-torn nation.

The Winter Olympics are a modern invention, but skiing is thousands of years old with a history as colorful as the gear you find on today's slopes.

A cross between a horse and a rhinoceros—with 14 toes? Learn eight amazing facts about the endangered Baird's tapir, whose animal ancestors date back 35 million years.