Meet the nano-chameleon, a new contender for the title of world's smallest reptile

A mammoth tooth uncovered from the Siberian permafrost yields the oldest DNA yet discovered and provides insight into the evolution of the giant beasts.

Our planet’s history includes episodes of cold so extreme that glaciers reached sea level in equatorial regions.

You know the old problem of how to portray the round globe of Earth on a flat map? Now a trio of map experts has worked together to solve this problem. Their new map is 2-sided and round.

To find alien life in our universe, scientists have considered searches for optical lasers or even giant energy-harvesting structures known as Dyson spheres. Now they're suggesting a more mundane sort of search, a hunt for air pollution in exoplanet atmospheres.

A magnetic reversal 42,000 years ago helped bring about earthly extinctions, scientists said, accompanied by changes in the sky including electrical storms and widespread auroras. "It would have been scary," they commented.

As more and more plastic trash permeates the oceans, microplastics are making their way into fish and shellfish, and potentially into humans.

No fatalities were reported in the February 13, 2021, strong earthquake in Japan, which occurred off Japan's east coast, near the epicenter of the 2011 9.0-magnitude Tohoku earthquake.

2021 has brought a deadly avalanche season. "We're only halfway through the season and we're 3/4 of the way to the number of fatalities we'd see in a typical year. The dangerous, record-breaking year keeps avalanche forecasters up at night," one expert said.

The polar vortex is an enormous, 3-dimensional ring of winds that surrounds the North and South poles during each hemisphere’s winter. The polar vortex influences the jet stream, which can bring cold winter weather to the U.S. and Europe.