Archaeologists are trading in their trowels for ground-penetrating radar and remote-sensing robots, while underwater explorers have added multi-beam sonar and real-time video to their arsenal of tools. The new technology is transforming the field of archaeology.
While many bugs have developed weapons and attack strategies that strike fear in the hearts of humans, they are an essential part of the ecosystem that should be embraced, not scorned.
A sap-sucking bug that coats plants with wads of foamy spit has been crowned the insect world's greatest leaper. It has more jumping prowess than fleas, out hops the springiest grasshoppers, and clears the high bar more quickly than bush crickets.
This season, storm chaser Tim Samaras logged 25,000 miles (40,000 kilometers) in search of funnel clouds. Most of the time, he never sees a tornado. But last month, Samaras scored his closest hit yet.
Singapore may have lost three-quarters of its species to development, a study reveals. More than half of its remaining plants and animals are squeezed into tiny sanctuaries and most are threatened. Could what's happened in the island country be the destiny for the biodiversity of the rest of tropical Asia?
Companion animals are being drafted into the war on terrorism. Long used to sniff out drugs or explosives, dogs can detect chemicals that might be used in weapons of mass destruction. Pets could also soon form a nationwide system to give early warning of a bioterror attack such as the plague.
Corals are rapidly disappearing from the Caribbean and unless conservation actions are taken immediately the trend may prove irreversible, according to scientists who performed the first ever basin-wide survey of reef decline. This story aired on our U.S. cable television news program National Geographic Today.
The enormous, stinking titan arum, or corpse flower, draws huge crowds to botanical gardens worldwide, who come to catch a rare glimpse, and whiff, of the world's largest inflorescence. Now, as a multitude of new cultivated specimens thrive, botanists are breaking old records for size and longevity, and probing the science of the plant as never before.
Elusive and cannibalistic, the Humboldt squid has a reputation so fearsome that it has earned the nickname "red devil." But to William Gilly, a biology professor at Stanford University, the mysterious squid is a beautiful sea creature that provides important ecological clues. Devils of the Deep, a National Geographic Ultimate Explorer adventure, airs this Sunday on MSNBC.
Giant rock art murals in hundreds of shelters and caves in Baja California Sur, Mexico, date back as far as 7,500 years ago, according to an ongoing study. Whoever the painters were they came well before the Aztecs established their culture in central Mexico in the 12th century A.D.
Researchers are developing a sonar system to help boaters steer off a collision course with the Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus Linneaus). The technology could be the difference between population growth and decline in the endangered species.
Later this summer, undersea explorer Robert Ballard and a team of scientists will embark on a 40-day expedition to the Black Sea and Mediterranean. Among their tools will be Hercules, an innovative remotely operated vehicle equipped with mechanical arms and fingers capable of excavating shipwrecks and undersea archaeological sites.
Wildlife specialists are headed to Kenya's Masailand to get a precise measure of the current lion population and attempt to broker a peace between the predators and livestock owners. The project is supported by the National Geographic Society Conservation Trust and the SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund.
At the National Aquarium in Baltimore, researchers are working with a pair of 4-foot-long nurse sharks to investigate how the creature's immune system responds to the anthrax bacterium. The approach may serve as a template for developing other tools to detect other bio-weapons.
On the "Voyage to Kure," Jean-Michel Cousteau hopes "to discover new territories, new groups, new species" in the remote and rarely visited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Given the islands' isolation, range of unique species, and relatively unexplored waters, Cousteau's film should indeed be full of discoveries.
