Dinosaur dioramas don’t display flowers and grasses—supposedly because they had not yet evolved. But it takes only one piece of the right kind of evidence to disprove a whole paradigm. Amazing amber fossils from Burma (now Myanmar) refute the idea that flowers were absent in the supposed Age of Reptiles by showing the abrupt appearance of fully-formed flowers.

New research shows that tropical forests quickly recover after clear-cutting by using clever mechanisms to locate sufficient levels of nitrogen that they need to thrive.

Green leaves might hang motionless most of the time, but plenty of activity stirs deep inside them. Many people understand that molecules move during photosynthesis, but most probably don't realize that plants also dabble in electronics—smartly crafted electronics.