David Hone of the University of Bristol in England has made a career of studying pterosaurs — flying reptiles from 100 million years ago or more. Several years back, while working in southern Germany, he visited the local Solnhofen Museum along with a lot of other pterosaur experts. As they peered into a glass museum case that held a sandy-colored, fossil-bearing rock, he recalls the scientists saying something like: “How lovely, another Rhamphorhynchus.” The fossil was nice, but tiny — and just one of some 120 or so specimens of this pterosaur from about 150 million years ago. Except...

On August 5, after a journey lasting more than 8 months, a carlike rover carefully settled down onto the surface of Mars. The vehicle is basically a science lab. Its mission: to search for evidence that the Red Planet might once have hosted life — even if the organisms were only one-celled microbes. The first stage of this mission — the landing — is “an amazing achievement,” observes Charles Bolden. He runs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, which built and delivered the vehicle to Mars. Several years ago, NASA scientists began considering the best place fo...

A British-Australian research team has just found coral trout living on the south side of the Great Barrier Reef sporting dark skin raised, scablike, brown-black growths. Although the authors believe they’ve stumbled onto an epidemic of melanoma — a type of skin cancer — other experts have their doubts. Strong ones.