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Nature

2,233 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 29 of 38.

1681. Europeans mapped California as an island for a centuryMexico’s Baja California peninsula runs 1,247 kilometres from Mexicali to Cabo San Lucas, 40 to 320 kilometres wide, with roughly 3,000 kilometres of shore, about sixty-five islan…
1682. Slingers gave these Mediterranean islands their classical nameSpain’s Balearic Islands sit in the western Mediterranean as an autonomous community whose capital is Palma de Mallorca. Western Pityuses (Ibiza, Formentera) and eastern Gymnesian…
1683. Indonesia’s Hindu island sits inside a coral megadiversity triangleBali is Indonesia’s westernmost Lesser Sunda island, a province of Bali plus Nusa Penida and neighbours between Java and Lombok. About 86.4 percent of residents follow Balinese Hi…
1684. A Venezuelan tepui drop still argues over the height crownAngel Falls, Salto Ángel in Spanish and Körepakupai Vená in Pemon, pours 979 metres off Auyán-tepui in Venezuela's Canaima National Park. No other waterfall drops so far without i…
1685. Twenty-six million cubic kilometres of ice sit on AntarcticaThe Antarctic ice sheet blankets ninety-eight percent of the continent across 14 million square kilometres, averaging more than two kilometres thick and holding about 26.5 million…
1686. A 1,300-kilometre finger of ice-covered bedrock islandsThe Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost reach of mainland Antarctica, juts 1,300 kilometres toward South America and covers 522,000 square kilometres, 80 per cent of it under ic…
1687. Italy’s spine keeps Europe’s last big predators in green parksThe Apennines run about 1,200 kilometres down peninsular Italy from the Ligurian Alps at Altare to Reggio di Calabria’s toe. Verdant parallel chains still shelter some of Europe’s…
1688. Ancient ridges that steered colonial America’s westward pushThe Appalachians run roughly 2,050 miles from central Alabama to Newfoundland, a southwest–northeast highland whose roots reach Rodinia’s assembly 1.1 billion years ago. Alternati…
1689. The world’s fourth-largest desert fills nearly all ArabiaThe Arabian Desert covers about 2.33 million square kilometres across almost the whole peninsula—from Yemen to the Gulf and from Oman toward Jordan and Iraq—ranking fourth among E…
1690. Earth’s largest peninsula is roughly India’s sizeThe Arabian Peninsula spans about 3.24 million square kilometres on the Arabian Plate—world’s largest peninsula, comparable to India—with nine countries sharing its deserts and co…
1691. Monsoon gates made this sea Old World trade’s hingeThe Arabian Sea occupies the northern Indian Ocean between Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, India, and the Horn approaches. Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb have linked east–west trade since third…
1692. A sea the size of a country shrank to a tenth and dustThe Aral Sea, once Earth’s third-largest lake at 68,000 square kilometres between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, began dying in the 1960s when Soviet irrigation stole its rivers. By 2…
1693. Thirty-six thousand Canadian islands fence the polar oceanCanada's Arctic Archipelago scatters 36,563 islands across about 1,424,500 square kilometres north of the mainland, most of it in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. After Gree…
1694. The smallest ocean is also the planet’s shallow cold capThe Arctic Ocean is the smallest, shallowest and coldest of Earth's five oceans, spanning about 14 million square kilometres around the North Pole, nearly the size of Antarctica a…
1695. The driest non-polar desert is also a fog-fed observatoryChile's Atacama is the driest non-polar desert and the largest fog desert on Earth, a 1,600-kilometre strip wedged between the Andes and the Coast Range. Some weather stations the…
1696. The ocean that split worlds and then braided them againThe Atlantic, second largest of Earth's five oceans, covers about 85 million square kilometres, some 17 per cent of the planet's surface. Its S-shaped basin long divided the Ameri…
1697. Sahara’s dark granite towers make a green island of rockNorthern Niger’s Aïr Mountains rise more than 1,800 metres across some 84,000 square kilometres of Sahara. Unusual dark peralkaline granites punch through the sand, late-summer ra…
1698. Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao share one Dutch Caribbean storyThe ABC islands—Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao—are the westernmost Leeward Antilles, sitting just off Venezuela yet tied to the Netherlands since an 1814 Anglo-Dutch treaty handed th…
1699. Outside Asia, no mountain tops Argentina’s AconcaguaAconcagua rises 6,967.15 metres in Argentina's Mendoza Province, higher than any mountain outside Asia and the second most prominent peak on Earth. Once an active stratovolcano ab…
1700. A shallow northern Mediterranean arm holds 1,300 islandsThe Adriatic Sea splits Italy from the Balkans as the Mediterranean’s northernmost arm, running from the Strait of Otranto to the Po Valley. More than 1,300 islands line mostly it…
1701. An island-studded sea that ferried Greece into AsiaThe Aegean Sea, a 215,000-square-kilometre Mediterranean embayment between the Balkans and Anatolia, links to the Black Sea via the Dardanelles and Marmara. Its island chains, the…
1702. Africa's rift lakes shelter more than 1,500 species of cichlid fishStrung along the East African Rift, the African Great Lakes include Victoria, the world's second-largest freshwater lake by area, and Tanganyika, second-largest by volume and dept…
1703. Fourteen volcanoes stitch Alaska toward KamchatkaThe Aleutians chain fourteen larger volcanic islands and fifty-five smaller ones across some 1,200 miles from the Alaska Peninsula toward Kamchatka, fencing the Bering Sea from th…
1704. Antarctica’s largest island hid as mainland until 1940Alexander Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Bellingshausen Sea, is the continent’s biggest island—yet explorers thought it was mainland until a 1940 sledge journey pr…
1705. A 1,200-kilometre arc born where Africa met EurasiaThe Alps stretch roughly 1,200 kilometres across Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria, and Slovenia. Tens of millions of years of African–Eurasian c…
1706. Golden mountains where four nations and two rivers meetThe Altai Mountains rise where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan converge, cradling headwaters of the Irtysh and Ob. Belukha tops the system at 4,506 metres. The name’s Turk…
1707. Earth’s widest high plain outside Tibet sits in the AndesThe Altiplano—Quechua and Aymara Qullaw—is west-central South America’s high plain, the most extensive plateau on Earth after Tibet. Averaging about 3,750 metres, it holds Lake Ti…
1708. Six million square kilometres of jungle, mostly in BrazilThe Amazon rainforest blankets most of a 7-million-square-kilometre basin, with roughly 6 million square kilometres under moist broadleaf canopy, over half of Earth's remaining ra…
1709. The Amazon outflows every rival; length still sparks fightsSouth America’s Amazon leads the planet in discharge—about 215,000 to 230,000 cubic metres per second, more than the next seven independent rivers combined—while scholars still ar…
1710. A Polynesian U.S. territory that refused full incorporationAmerican Samoa is a self-governing, unincorporated U.S. territory in Polynesia, forty miles southeast of independent Samoa. Volcanic Tutuila and its neighbours, plus Rose Atoll an…
1711. Classical Oxus still threads Central Asia’s highest desertsThe Amu Darya, the Oxus of Greek and Latin writers, forms where the Vakhsh and Panj meet on the Afghan–Tajik border below the Pamirs, then runs some 2,400 kilometres through one o…
1712. A black-dragon border river between Russia and ChinaThe Amur, called the Heilong or Black Dragon River in Chinese, divides the Russian Far East from Northeast China along much of its 2,824 kilometres. Counting the Argun, it runs 4,…
1713. Asia Minor fed Europe’s first farmers nine millennia agoAnatolia, or Asia Minor, is the westernmost thrust of Asia and makes up most of modern Turkey, hemmed in by the Mediterranean, Aegean, Marmara and Black seas. Around 9,000 years a…
1714. Eight hundred islands, thirty-one lived-in, between three seasIndia’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands union territory, whose capital Port Blair lies about 1,190 kilometres from Chennai, counts 836 islands, only thirty-one inhabited, split by the…
1715. A Burma Sea boxed by islands and still vibrating from 2004The Andaman Sea—once called the Burma Sea—is a northeastern Indian Ocean basin edged by Myanmar and Thailand and screened from Bengal’s open bay by the island chain of Andamans an…
1716. The world’s longest continental range walls South AmericaThe Andes run 8,900 kilometres down South America's western edge, the longest continental mountain range on Earth and the highest outside Asia. Averaging about 4,000 metres, they …
1717. Apis mellifera is the beekeeper's default honey engineAmong roughly seven to twelve honey-bee species, Apis mellifera—Latin for honey-bearing bee—is the everyday western honey bee. Eusocial colonies hold one queen, sterile-leaning wo…
1718. Whales live entire lives at sea—from birth to sucklingAs a colloquial label, whales cover the larger fully aquatic placental mammals of Cetacea. They feed, mate, calve, and nurse offshore. Size spans roughly 2.6 m and 135 kg dwarfs u…
1719. The biggest fish alive filters plankton like a swimming sieveRhincodon typus, a slow carpet shark, is the largest living fish—one measured 18.8 m. Tropical oceans above about 21 °C are home; lifespan estimates run roughly 80–130 years. In A…
1720. Whiteflies slip through greenhouse mesh too fine for their own predatorsAleyrodidae—the sole family in Aleyrodoidea—are tiny hemipterans that usually suck from leaf undersides. Most sport wingspans under 3 mm and bodies 1–2 mm long, so small that gree…
1721. Sus scrofa painted Eurasia before it filled farms worldwideWild boar—also called Eurasian wild pig—are native across much of Eurasia and North Africa and have been widely introduced. Up to sixteen subspecies in four skull-based groups wer…
1722. Blue wildebeest rivers of herds still cross East AfricaConnochaetes antelopes—wildebeest or gnu—belong to Bovidae's Alcelaphinae and live in eastern and southern Africa. Fossils suggest blue and black wildebeest split about a million …
1723. Grey wolves still number roughly a quarter million worldwideCanis lupus—the grey wolf—of Eurasia and North America includes more than thirty subspecies, including the domestic dog. Among Canis, wolves are most specialised for cooperative h…
1724. Gulo the glutton is the largest land mustelidWolverines (Gulo gulo)—also carcajou or quickhatch from East Cree—are the biggest terrestrial mustelids, roaming boreal forest, subarctic, and alpine tundra especially across the …
1725. Woodlice are land crustaceans, not lice at allOniscidean isopods nicknamed woodlice haunt damp wood yet are neither parasites nor insects. Molecular clocks suggest Paleozoic landfall, though the oldest fossils are mid-Cretace…
1726. Woodpeckers drill timber almost everywhere except Australasia and MadagascarWoodpeckers, piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers form family Picidae within Piciformes, absent from Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, and Madagascar. Drumming and chiseling mostl…
1727. Six hundred wrasse species polish reefs in bright armourLabridae holds over 600 marine species in 81 genera, many dazzlingly coloured. Most stay under 20 cm, yet humphead wrasse can reach 2.5 m. The English name comes from Cornish wrag…
1728. Almost all wrens are New World voices in brown feathersTroglodytidae counts 96 species in 19 genera of small brown passerines. Only the Eurasian wren among them lives outside the Americas. Most look plain yet sing loud, complex songs;…
1729. Horseshoe crabs are sword-tailed cousins of spidersOrder Xiphosura—Greek for sword tail—groups arthropods related to arachnids, the familiar horseshoe crabs among them. Their look barely shifted across hundreds of millions of year…
1730. Tibetan g.yag means the bull—females answer to 'briDomestic yaks (Bos grunniens) carry long hair across the Himalaya, Tibetan Plateau, Pamirs, and neighboring highlands. English yak borrows Tibetan g.yag for the male; females are …
1731. Three living zebra species wear Africa's barcode coatsZebras—subgenus Hippotigris—are African equines with black-and-white stripes. Living species are Grévy's, plains, and mountain zebras. Primary grazers on often poor forage, they f…
1732. Skinks shed tails and hide necks across fifteen hundred speciesScincidae packs more than 1,500 described species into about a hundred genera, making skinks one of lizard life's most diverse families. Most look short-necked with modest legs, y…
1733. Africa's tsetse folds its wings like stacked bladesTsetse—genus Glossina, in their own family—are large biting flies across much of tropical Africa and parts of the Arabian Peninsula. Twenty-three living species are known; fossils…
1734. New Zealand's tuatara is no lizard—it is the last of its orderSphenodon punctatus looks lizard-like yet is the sole living rhynchocephalian, a once-diverse order that appears in Middle Triassic rocks about 244–241.5 million years ago. Endemi…
1735. Tuna run warm-blooded engines through open oceanFifteen Thunnini species in five genera—from fifty-centimetre bullet tuna to giants—share a rare fish trick: with opah and mackerel sharks, they keep body heat above seawater. Str…
1736. Africa's banana-eaters flash green and shout go-awayTuracos of family Musophagidae—"banana-eaters," including plantain-eaters and go-away-birds—are nearly unique among birds for being endemic to Africa (mousebirds are another). Sem…
1737. Turbot's left-eyed disk sells as white table luxuryScophthalmus maximus is a large left-eyed flatfish of Northeast Atlantic, Baltic, and Mediterranean shores—an important food species with bright white flesh that stays pale when c…
1738. Turtle shells are ribcages worn outside the bodyOrder Testudines wraps reptiles in shells built mainly from ribs: a domed bony carapace above and flatter plastron below, sheathed in keratin scutes like hair and claws. Living tu…
1739. T. rex balanced a huge skull on tiny, strong armsTyrannosaurus rex—Latin rex for king—is among the best-represented large theropods, a bipedal carnivore whose massive skull rode opposite a heavy tail. Hind limbs dwarfed short ye…
1740. Tyrant flycatchers are the Americas' biggest bird familyTyrannidae packs more than four hundred passerine species from Alaska to Patagonia—the world's largest bird family and the most diverse in the Americas. Most wear camouflage brown…

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