Smithsonian Magazine

Contents of a Wolf Pup’s Stomach From 14,400 Years Ago Are Teaching Researchers About the Lives of the Last Woolly Rhinos

Analysis of woolly rhinoceros DNA recovered from the permafrost-preserved wolf further hints that the Ice Age beasts went ...
Defector

Natan Last Has Thought A Lot About Crosswords

It may seem like they’ve been around forever, but the crossword as we know it is barely a century old. They started in the New York World in 1913, where it was originally called a “word-cross.” Going ...

Meet The Snake That Refused To Lose Its Legs — A Herpetologist Explains

This ancient, leg-bearing snake is rewriting the story of how serpents slithered, and sometimes walked, their way through ...

The Jimmy Cult, Explained: ‘28 Years Later: The Bone Temple’ Resurfaces One of the U.K.’s Most Shocking Sex Abuse Scandals

How Jack O'Connell's Sir Jimmy Crystal and his gang of Jimmies take inspiration from the disgraced British icon and prolific ...
Smithsonian Magazine on MSN

All Nine of Jan van Eyck’s Surviving Portraits Are Coming Together for the Very First Time in History

The Northern Renaissance painter's innovative techniques altered the course of art history. An upcoming exhibition in London ...

Scientists find oldest direct evidence of whaling in a place they never suspected

Once dismissed as sticks and forgotten in a museum, the 5,000-year-old tools show prehistoric people hunted whales far from ...