The bewitching song of El Dorado—fabled fountainhead of gold—still echoes along Venezuela’s longest river as it flows past rain forest burrows, cattle ranches, and natural caches of mineral wealth. The Orinoco is a river of many contrasts, and author Donovan Webster visited some of the people who rely on it for both survival and profit. Photographs by Robert Caputo.

Probing the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, a nuclear submarine locates the largest concentration of ancient shipwrecks found in deep water. Technology is now available to archaeologists who want to search for what rests at depths previously inaccessible. “These depths may hold more history than all the museums of the world combined,” says author and deep-sea pioneer Robert D. Ballard. Photographs by Priit J. Vesilind, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Senior Writer.

Read Ballard’s essay “To Appreciate or To Plunder?” and express your thoughts in our forum on the ethics of salvaging underwater archaeological sites.

Surviving a self-imposed ordeal of 10,000 wind-blasted miles (16,000 kilometers), American journalist Roff Martin Smith completes a circuit of his adopted country and finds himself in a different place. Photographs by R. Ian Lloyd.

This Pacific atoll, heavily contaminated by radioactivity during a 1954 nuclear bomb test, remains off-limits for human habitation. How has the atoll’s marine life fared? A GEOGRAPHIC team goes deep to find out. By Bill Curtsinger and Emory Kristof.

Rich in natural beauty and native pride, the hills that straddle Arkansas and Missouri now host an influx of newcomers whose ways sometimes strain a staunchly independent culture. “You’re only a stranger for five minutes, but you’re a newcomer for 50 years,” says a longtime native about the 60,000-square-mile (155,400-square-kilometer) wooded plateau called the Ozarks. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC writer Lisa Moore LaRoe’s essay captures the character of an area where the population is growing at a rate nearly twice the national average. Photographs by Randy Olson.

Bizarre organisms filled the seas more than half a billion years ago, foreshadowing the rise of more complex creatures. Their fossils are rewriting the history of life on Earth. Author Richard Monastersky continues his search for life’s origins. Photographs by O. Louis Mazzatenta.

Richard Monastersky takes a slightly different angle on the origins of life and questions the ethics of creating life in a tube. Join our forum and offer your thoughts.

Shoot them or save them? Opinions on prairie dogs divide the American West. What’s clear is that these rodents are disappearing, along with their entire ecosystem. Michael E. Long reports from the western front. Photographs by Raymond Gehman.

Experience the life of a prairie dog in our virtual burrow.

In Next Month’s Issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:

Physical World: How Will the Planet Change?; Cascadia; Unlocking the Climate Puzzle; Return of the Gray Wolf; Prince Edward Island; The Whitbread—Race into Danger