Students participating at the state level of the National Geographic Bee today have quite a challenge ahead of them. For the local teachers, state Bee coordinators, and the Geography Competitions staff at National Geographic, working to insure the continued success of the competition presents challenges all its own.
Researchers announced today they've unearthed a 365-million-year-old fossil limb bone of an ancient tetrapod (four-limbed, backboned animal) in Pennsylvania. Scientists say the find—revealed during road construction—will help shed light on how ancient animals evolved limbs from fins.
Shark attacks helicopter. Switzerland sees a bumper spaghetti crop. The headlines are just several in a list of memorable hoaxes compiled by National Geographic News to mark April Fools' Day.
By disrespecting the Pashtun tribal culture in Afghanistan, the United States may have failed to gain a vital ally in its search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, according to National Geographic Adventure magazine's Robert Young Pelton (pictured) and other Afghanistan experts.
Brood X has arrived. Are you ready? Billions of black, shrimp-size bugs with transparent wings and beady red eyes are beginning to carpet trees, buildings, poles, and just about anything else vertical in the U.S. from the eastern seaboard west through Indiana and south to Tennessee.
Each year hundreds of people die during desperate and illegal attempts to enter the U.S. across the Mexico-U.S. border. Some 40 percent of them are never identified. Now a forensic anthropologist is using her skills to reunite the deceased with families desperate for news of their fate.
Tiny flecks of DNA from the fossils of human ancestors and other primates may shed light on the evolution of modern humans, researchers believe. New laboratory techniques may make it possible to analyze genetic fragments embedded in ancient bones, and even feces, that are up to a million years old.
In Thailand there are men, women, and the so-called "third sex" known as ladyboys. Thailand's most famous ladyboy, a former champion kickboxer named Nong Tum, describes his transformation into a petit young woman.
Six high school seniors in San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico, have received college scholarships worth U.S. $10,000—the Kyoto Youth Scholar Discovery Awards.
The Three Flags Ceremony marking the bicentennial of the Louisiana Purchase was held on March 14 in St. Louis, overlooking the Mississippi River under the Gateway Arch. It replicated a similar ceremony two hundred years ago, when the flags of Spain, France, and the U.S. were raised and lowered to mark the transfer of power over a vast portion of North America—and launched the locomotive of U.S. expansion to the West.
The underwater talents who play living, breathing, bubble-blowing mermaids at Weeki Wachee Springs on Florida's Gulf Coast are fighting to save the roadside attraction they say is a state landmark. (This story is also covered Tuesday, March 23, on our U.S. cable television program National Geographic On Assignment.)
The budget-starved U.S. National Parks Service has been warning for years that it has a growing backlog of deferred maintenance of facilities. Now park managers are being asked to consider ways to cut services—ranging from reducing lifeguards and guided tours to closing visitor centers and even entire parks on certain days.
Fifteen years ago, human error caused the oil tanker Exxon Valdez to spill 11 million gallons (40 million liters) of crude into Alaska's Prince William Sound. While scores of other tanker accidents have dumped far more oil into the seas, few, if any, have caused more environmental damage.
