Snakes aren’t simple tubes. Their bodies have five regions—including a short neck By measuring every vertebra along the bodies of 13 native Australian snakes, evolutionary biologists have discovered that a snake’s spine is much more organized than previously believed. Instead of being one long, uniform structure, it contains five distinct anatomical regions, including a surprisingly…

A Soviet spacecraft designed to land on Venus in 1972 finally completed its journey more than half a century later, though not in the way its builders intended. Kosmos 482, part of the Soviet Union’s ambitious Venera programme, was supposed to explore the Solar System’s hottest planet. Instead, a rocket malfunction left the spacecraft trapped…