Children sacrificed by Inca rulers were fed high-quality food for up to a year, sent on a grueling march, and drugged before death, a new study shows.

Watch as language hunters in Australia's outback discover the only known speaker of a language long thought to be dead.

Experts are warning of a "global extinction crisis" of the world's languages and have identified five hotspots where tongues are vanishing most rapidly.

Video: Last Speaker of "Dead" Language

The Mekong catfish travels more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) upriver to spawn—a discovery that means a planned dam on the river might spell disaster for the species.

See pictures of the world's biggest freshwater fishes, including a bear-size catfish and a half-ton stingray.

A rich trove of fossils recently found in New Mexico suggests that dinosaurs took a slow path to domination over life on land.

New medical scans bolster the theory that an unidentified corpse is Akhenaten—the heretic pharaoh married to Nefertiti who some believe was Tut's father.

Photos: Who Was Tut's Father?

Watch as archaeologists reveal how they identified the long-lost mummy of Hatshepsut, an Egyptian ruler famous for donning the male garb of a pharaoh.

Two species of ancient penguin have been uncovered in a Peruvian desert, including one that stood almost 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall, a new study reports.

His skull pierced by a Spanish musket ball 500 years ago, the earliest documented gun fatality in the New World was an Inca, archaeologists say.

Pictures: First New World Gun Victim

Watch as archaeologists uncover and examine the 500-year-old skeleton of the Inca man they believe was the first shooting victim in the Americas.

Ancient Egyptians coveted the famed gold of the kingdom of Kush. Now, 2,000 years later, evidence of the massive mining operation has finally come to light.

Africa's first sub-Saharan kingdom was in the gold business, newfound artifacts in Sudan confirm. And it may have brought unwanted attention from neighboring Egypt.

Photo Gallery: Gold-Mining, Burial Artifacts

A program to return captive-born giant pandas to the wild in China has suffered a serious setback with the death of a five-year-old male that was released last April.

From moles underground to squirrels in the trees, a variety of animals are impacted by the regular overflow of periodical cicadas, studies suggest.