A newfound giant turtle that lived 60 million years ago in what is now northwestern South America would have been more than a mouthful for a neighboring predator, the world's largest snake Titanoboa.
The turtle's huge carapace, or shell, was nearly circular, like a tire, the researchers said.
[Full Story:
Giant, Round Prehistoric Turtle Discovered]
New Yorkers will be treated to a splendid sight this evening (July 12): It's one of two days a year when the setting sun aligns perfectly with Manhattan's street grid. As the sun sets on the Big Apple, it will illuminate both the north and south sides of every cross street.
The event has been dubbed "Manhattanhenge" for the way it turns New York City into a Stonehenge-like sun dial.
[Full Story:
Sun Turns NYC into 'Manhattanhenge' Tonight]
The northern lights of Earth are more than just dazzling light shows — they also generate their own strange applause too, a new study reveals.
The same energetic particles that create the dancing, dazzling northern lights high up in Earth's atmosphere also produce strange "clapping" noises just 230 feet (70 meters) from the ground, researchers said.
[Full Story:
Northern Lights Oddity: Strange Sounds of Auroras Explained]
NASA scientists on a recent research flight got an eyeful when their plane encountered a massive supercell thunderstorm gobbling up smoke from wildfires — a phenomenon rarely glimpsed up close, and one that scientists are eager to study.
On June 22, one of the researchers aboard a DC-8 aircraft snapped images of curtains of thick, gray smoke being lofted high into the atmosphere and sucked up through soaring, anvil-shaped clouds that are the signature of large thunderstorms.
[Full Story:
Dramatic Photos Show Wildfire Smoke Sucked Up by Storm]
A NASA spacecraft has spied a vortex swirling in the atmosphere high above the south pole of the Saturn moon Titan, hinting that winter may be coming to the huge body's southern reaches.
NASA's Cassini probe photographed the polar vortex — or mass of swirling gas — during a flyby of Titan on June 27. The vortex appears to complete one full rotation in nine hours, while it takes Titan about 16 days to spin once around its axis.
[Full Story: Strange Vortex Discovered on Saturn Moon Titan]
Scientists studying king penguins on a sub-Antarctic island, along with tourists, may be stressing the waddling, flightless birds, new research suggests. However, it seems the penguins are getting used to their human visitors.
The new study reveals how more than 50 years of human presence, or the time since a permanent research station was set up, on Possession Island, has impacted a major colony of breeding king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), called the "Baie du Marin" colony. Research reported last year on these penguins found that flipper tagging was linked with fewer chicks and a lower survival rate for the birds compared with untagged king penguins.
[Full Story:
King Penguin Colony Getting Used to Humans]
The Baie du Marin colony of breeding king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) has gotten used to humans, it seems, who have been present on Possession Island where the penguins reside since a permanent research station was set up there in 1961.
[View Images: In Photos: The King Penguins of Possession Island]
Wolverines, bearlike members of the weasel family, seem to depend on spring snow cover, but it's not clear why.
Now, an international group of researchers has a new theory: Wolverines use snow like a refrigerator to preserve food during the lean, cold times after their young are born, they suggest.
[Full Story: Climate Change Could Melt Wolverines' Snowy 'Refrigerators']
When species lose their natural habitat to deforestation and other causes, they don't immediately disappear. Instead, they gradually die off over several generations, racking up an "extinction debt" that must eventually be paid in full. New research shows that the Brazilian Amazon has accrued a heavy vertebrate extinction debt, with more than 80 percent of extinctions expected from historical deforestation still impending.
We chose this image for the emotional illustration of what is currently happening in the Amazon.
[Full Story: Amazon Due for Numerous Species Extinctions]
A fleeting meteor streaks across the night sky over a New Jersey beach in serene view captured by a local photographer.
Night sky photographer Jack Fusco captured the meteor as it flared up over Cape May, N.J., beach in the wee hours of June 28, just after the peak of the annual Bootid meteor shower.
[Full Story:
Meteor Lights Up Beach Night Sky in Photo]
