Rebecca McPhee

The best outdoor adventure links of the past seven days, from the long-lost Cyclopean Cave to paddling a pumpkin 74km to wild swimming Georgia.

The 3,000-year-old map places the Ark beyond Mesopotamia, in an unknown land where jewels hang from trees instead of fruit.

Around 201 million years ago, a mass extinction wiped out 75% of the species on Earth. This was not the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs but an earlier event that ultimately led to their rise. Scientists have long believed that sudden global warming caused the catastrophe. New research suggests the opposite: Icy temperatures were to blame.

Beachgoers in Denmark, Australia, were shocked to see a lone emperor penguin waddling out of the ocean last week. This species, the world’s biggest penguin, lives only in Antarctica. This is the farthest north one has ever appeared.

Scientists have brought a vampire back from the dead with 3D printing and modeling clay. Found in an unmarked cemetery in Pien, Poland in 2022, her grave shows all the signs of a burial of someone considered a vampire.

Scientists have discovered a mummified saber-toothed kitten in the Siberian permafrost. The cold, dry conditions perfectly preserved the three-week-old cub.

When we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the web. Here are some of the best adventure links we’ve discovered this week.

Scientists have discovered the world’s largest coral formation in the Southwest Pacific Ocean. Measuring 34 by 32 meters, it can be seen from space, but somehow we have missed it for hundreds of years.

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Claudia Steffensen was hiking in the Italian Alps in 2023 when something caught her eye. She stepped on a rock with a footprint embedded in it. Little did she know she had just uncovered a 280-million-year-old ecosystem.