Genetic evidence points to individuals from South America having possibly floated on a raft to Polynesian islands about 500 years before Europeans navigated there.

As the afternoon breezes blow harder in the Atacama Desert—a place so desolate it’s used as a model of Mars—more microbes move into its driest regions.

Scientists hope to breed the species in captivity because their habitat has nearly disappeared.

Unlike other populations living at high altitude, Andeans didn’t rely on hypoxia-related genes.

The Chilean government contends that the remains of a mummified fetus, recently sequenced by US researchers, were exhumed illegally.