NOVA

Some 2 million years ago, when the high Arctic was a much warmer, greener place, a unique collection of animals coexisted: Caribou, geese, hares, even camels.

For decades, scientists have tried to unlock the secrets of ancient DNA. Follow the dramatic quest to recover DNA millions of years old and reveal a lost world from before the last Ice Age.

Researchers call this movement “beakiation” which is a play on an existing term, “brachiation,” used to describe how Gibbons move by swinging from their arms.

In 1887, the men working on the Eiffel Tower reported bleeding, difficulty breathing, and partial paralysis after being in pressurized air chambers. Today, we know this illness as the bends.

The iron and steel interior of Lady Liberty works together to hold her over 300 feet above New York harbor more than 100 years after construction.

The Eiffel Tower is an engineering icon that changed the face of the modern world.

At the time of its construction, the Eiffel Tower was the tallest structure ever built. That meant that the engineers had a key challenge: making sure the structure could survive the wind.

Explore the revolutionary engineering behind Paris’s iconic landmark. Completed in 1889, the iron tower smashed the record for the tallest structure on Earth, ushering in a new age of global construction that reached for the skies.

There are multiple theories about what happened to the people of Rapa Nui - also known as Easter Island - and the famous Moai statues. Some say the civilization fell into collapse and ruin. But a new theory tells a different story, one of resilience and ingenuity against all odds.

A new generation of researchers is revealing the rich history, innovation, and resilience of the Rapanui people.

How were Easter Island’s giant stone heads made? New research challenges the idea that their construction led to environmental and social collapse – and uncovers surprising clues about the origins, innovations, and resilience of the Rapanui people.

The oceans are thought to be where life started but about 50-million years ago, something incredible happened: some mammals found their way back into the water.

This part of the Sahara Desert is the resting place of some of the earliest whales ever found. These fossils may hold the key to how whales evolved.

A small furry carnivore that lived both on land and sea is the ancestor of modern whales.

A spectacular fossil graveyard reveals a 43-million-year-old whale that had four legs and could walk. Follow scientists as they search for new clues to how mammals moved from land into the sea to become the largest animals on Earth.

Many Black families in America don’t have robust ancestry records because of the legacy of slavery and family separation. But this documentary filmmaker is on a mission: use DNA technology to solve the mysteries of his family tree.

Many descendants of enslaved people have little record of their family's ancestry. Follow one family's quest to discover their lost history, and see how science and genealogy can help rebuild a family tree broken by slavery. Join filmmaker Byron Hurt at his extended family reunion as they celebrate the joy of family in the African diaspora and discover new details of their history.

The World Health Organization approved anti-malaria vaccine, R-21, in 2023. Children in Ivory Coast were the first to receive the vaccine in July of 2024.

Around the 1900s, parts of the United States were awash with Malaria—especially in the South and parts of the Eastern Seaboard. And it even has impacted major historical events like the American Revolution.

Malaria overwhelms the body before it has a chance to fight back, making the development of a vaccine especially challenging.