Deserts

A large lake just formed in the middle of North America's driest area

Odd patterns of bare patches called "fairy circles" found in only two places on Earth may be the result of heavy rain and hot weather.

The government shutdown lasted just 35 days. The damage that happened during it at Joshua Tree National Park could take decades to heal.

Archaeologists in Egypt recently unearthed a grim discovery: skeletons of a pregnant woman and her fetus.

One of North America's most unique desert oases is called Quitobaquito Springs.

Since 1920, the Sahara Desert has grown by about 10 percent.

Scientists have unearthed desert spiders' underground-tunnel-building secrets.

Four legs good, two legs bad? Not if you're a jerboa, a tiny, bipedal, desert rodent.

An unexpected rain has caused the world's driest nonpolar desert to burst into bloom.

Chile's Atacama Desert, one of the world's driest places, is now flush with flowers after an unexpected rain.

By mid-February in the three great hot and dry deserts of the American West, wildflowers turn stark desert landscapes into a sea of color.

Color is popping up everywhere in the California desert, thanks to a wet winter after years of drought.

Across the desert regions of the southwestern United States southward into central Mexico, a feisty little bird called the cactus wren thrives.

A burn scar left by a wildfire in Western Australia is so massive, it's visible from space, according to images captured by a NASA satellite.

A new species of bee gets its name from the Pueblo dwellings it sometimes inhabits.

The twists and turns of a scorpion's underground burrows are generally inaccessible to anything that isn't a scorpion — including scientists. That is, until now.

Scientists investigate a massive and long-hidden structure at the ancient city of Petra.