Scorpionflies with long-reaching mouthparts may have helped plants procreate long before blossoms evolved.

The world-renowned ice caps could disappear by 2022, new research suggests.

A NASA model incorporates how atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases interact, yielding better estimates of the gases' warming and cooling effects. (p. 5)

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, hordes of readers are reveling in On the Origin of Species, which sets forth the case for evolution via natural selection. Others are poring over The Voyage of the Beagle, the chronicle of Darwin’s five-year, round-the-world expedition. It’s probably safe to say, however, that only die-hard Darwinistas are cracking the spine on his last book, The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits. In this work, which Darwin himself described as “a curious little book,” he discu... (p. 22)

Minerals still accumulate in New Mexico’s Snowy River.

Trees near high-traffic areas accumulate tiny particles.

A modern survey of terrain determines flow rate of the 1889 flood that was one of America's deadliest disasters. (p. 10)

Scientists have traced the reappearance of cotton pests in west-central Texas to a tropical storm.

Fossil analyses hint that several species thrived during the world’s largest mass extinction. (p. 10)

Charles K. Kao wins for discoveries enabling fiber-optic communication, and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith win for inventing the charge-coupled device (p. 14)

Scientists have uncovered a feather-laden, peacock-sized dinosaur that predates the oldest known bird. (p. 8)