Brian Switek's Blog

The practice wasn���t new in 1812. But a map in a newspaper gave it a name that stuck.

Huge animals play outsized roles in their ecosystems���even in death.

When you read stories about scientists identifying a new link between Gene X and Disease Y, the underlying studies vary a lot in quality. At one extreme, you get papers which show that a variant of Gene X is common in a small group of people with Disease Y and not in healthy controls… and […]

The iconic illustrations by Austrian artist Heinrich Berann have been digitized in high resolution for the first time, three decades after they were created.

More people are turning to entomologists to diagnose seemingly inexplicable sensations of parasites crawling on their bodies.

More people are turning to entomologists to identify parasites they believe are crawling on their bodies, but which turn out not to be real.

Sixty-five years after the first climbers summited Mount Everest, we look back on our most stunning maps of the mountain.

A century ago, National Geographic magazine started creating supplement maps, designed to adorn walls and explore every corner of our Earth in intricate detail. Here are some of the best.

More than 6,000 maps from the magazine's 130-year-long history have been digitally compiled for the first time.

The Muggletonians believed that Earth was the center of the universe���and made beautiful maps to prove it.