Christopher Joyce

The origin of the first primates — the group that includes humans, apes and monkeys — is thought to lie in the deep past, about 55 million years ago.

Fossils from that period are rare. But now, there's an exciting new one. It's called Archicebus achilles, roughly meaning "beginning long-tailed ...

Brazil is a paradise for birds; the country has more than 1,700 species. Among them is the colorful toucan, a bird with an almost comically giant bill that can be half as long as its body. There are lots of different types of toucan — red-breasted, channel-billed, keel-billed, saffron toucanet ...

By the end of the century, the birthplace of America may be underwater.

The first successful English colony in America was at Jamestown, Va., a swampy island in the Chesapeake Bay. The colony endured for almost a century, and remnants of the place still exist. You can go there and ...

"First they ate their horses, and then fed upon their dogs and cats, as well as rats, mice and snakes."

So says James Horn of the historical group Colonial Williamsburg, paraphrasing an account by colony leader George Percy of what conditions were like for the hundreds of men and ...

President Obama affirmed Tuesday that there's evidence Syrians have been attacked with chemical weapons — in particular, nerve gas.

But that's not the same as proof positive.

"We don't know how they were used, when they were used, who used them," Obama said. "We don't have a chain of ...

There's a mystery in West Africa that's puzzled scientists for years. Strange circles of bare soil appear in grassland; they're commonly called "fairy circles." These naturally occurring shapes last for decades, until the grass eventually takes over and the circles fade.

Now German scientists think they have an explanation — ...

Wind power is growing faster than ever — almost half of the new sources of electricity added to the U.S. power grid last year were wind farms.

But is the sky the limit? Several scientists now say it's actually possible to have so many turbines that they start to ...

The new boom in natural gas from shale has changed the energy economy of the United States. But there's another giant reservoir of natural gas that lies under the ocean floor that, theoretically, could dwarf the shale boom.

No one had tapped this gas from the seabed until this week, ...

There's plenty of evidence that the climate has warmed up over the past century, and climate scientists know this has happened throughout the history of the planet. But they want to know more about how this warming is different.

Now a research team says it has some new answers. It ...

A new study of Central African forest elephants has found their numbers down by 62 percent between 2002 and 2011. The study comes as governments and conservationists meet in Thailand to amend the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

African forest elephants have been in trouble for a while, ...

In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, New Yorkers, local politicians and scientists face a tough decision: How to spend limited funds to defend themselves in a world where climate change i...

The small projectile points seem to be 14,500 years old, the oldest direct evidence of people in America. The weapons appear to be as old or older than points made by the Clovis, who ...

Industry has ruined a lot of Pennsylvania's water. Coal mining companies hammered the state, leaving behind acidic water that turned thousands of miles of streams into dead zones. Peo...

Tiny particles from power plants and fires help create new clouds, which shade the oceans from the sun. This means changes in sea-surface temperatures. And that has profound effects o...

The Kemp's ridley sea turtle, which hopped a ride aboard floating seaweed, made the 4,600 mile journey from the Gulf of Mexico to the shores of Portugal in 2008. Nicknamed Johnny Vasc...

The basic idea is to have rich countries that emit lots of climate-warming gases pay poorer countries to keep their forests, or even expand them. That's because forests suck carbon fr...

The depths of our oceans are dark, punishingly cold and utterly devoid of life. Or so scientists thought, until a team of researchers in the late 1970s stumbled upon squishy, rubbery ...