Though well-known for its colorful slabs of petrified wood, Petrified Forest National Park harbors much more in its badlands. A decade of work recently was followed with the announcement that the fossilized remains of a new species of Triassic reptile has been discovered in the park.

With little light pollution obscuring the skies over Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona, it can be a perfect spot for studying the stars overhead. On October 19 you can do just that with a park ranger and other astronomers and photographers.

For more than a century, freight trains have rumbled up and over Marias Pass, skirting the south boundary of Glacier National Park, casting rolling shadows on the Middle Fork of the Flathead River below. Until recently the major threat was a grain car derailment, which on occasion left bears woozy from eating fermented grain. Today a derailment involving a 100-car train hauling highly combustible Bakken crude oil risks an environmental catastrophe unprecedented in National Park Service history.

A window into the last Ice Age in the present-day desert outside of Las Vegas brings a missing link into the National Park System along with a small, but enticing, possibility that fossilized human remains are buried next to those of ancient bison, camels, and even lions.