South America

New techniques have shown that people reached the New World far earlier than the long-standing estimate of 13,000 years ago, but scientists still debate exactly when humans arrived on the continent—and how.

Diverse lines of evidence point to humans’ presence in the New World long before the dawn of Clovis culture. But rewriting this chapter of human history raises many questions about how these early people came to inhabit these continents.

The famous ecologist was a lifelong champion for conservation.

Scientists find human DNA preserved in lice cement from the heads of South American mummies.

Projects aimed at collecting big data about the ocean’s tiniest life forms continue to expand our view of the seas.

In Chapter 15, “Above the Falls,” author Jonathan Meiburg recounts an evening on a research expedition near the Rewa River in Guyana.

An unsung group of South American falcons yields clues to the prehistory of a continent, and hints at secrets of the avian brain.

While questions still outnumber answers, new findings from archaeology, genetics, and other disciplines are revealing surprising insights into the early cultures of the most recently populated continent.

Genetics and archaeology yield clues as to when humans first arrived on the continent and how these early settlers lived.

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

The Natural History Museum and Botanical Garden is still assessing the damage from a June 15 fire.

The company behind a now-discredited study on hydroxychloroquine also posted a report that has been cited by Latin American governments recommending ivermectin as a possible coronavirus treatment. Clinicians there say the effects have been extremely damaging.

An extinct rodent relative of the capybara appears to have had a smaller brain-to-body ratio than similar species.

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.

Nine months after a fire destroyed priceless collections, scientists are working restore the archives and keep their research afloat.

Genetic information from dozens of individuals living 700 to 10,000 years ago reveals connections between Clovis and Native Americans and South Americans.

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

Divergent human lineages of North America intermingled before setting off to establish populations of Central and South America.  

S. Allen Counter pursued scientific questions within various cultures throughout the world.