Nature Notes

Dr. Rachel Laker, of Hanover College in Indiana, specializes in taphonomy, which explores the processes bones undergo between an animal’s death and fossilization. Big Bend National Park is one site of her research.

Painted on cave walls where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande, the rock art of the Lower Pecos canyonlands casts a powerful spell. Its imagery is intricate, depicting human-like figures with upraised arms, geometric forms and animals like snakes, birds and mountain lions. And its scale is vast. Some panels span a hundred feet or more, and there are hundreds of such sites.

Cave scientist Riannon Colton is working to unlock one of the cavern’s mysteries: its “speleometeorology.” Because it turns out that big caves, like big mountains, create their own weather.

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands – where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande – contain globally significant rock art. But these same shallow caves have preserved much else from prehistory: bits of tools and textiles, plant and animal remains.

It features prominently in the earliest European account of the American Southwest, and it’s a fascinating chapter in Texas history. And yet, much about La Junta – the Native American society that flourished at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos, at present-day Presidio-Ojinaga – remains mysterious. Archeologists haven’t given it the same attention as other farming and village societ...

The Devils River is frequently described as the most pristine river in Texas. Flowing where the Chihuahuan Desert blends into the Hill Country and the South Texas shrublands, it’s a luminous ribbon of water in an arid land. It’s also a hunter’s paradise, with a rich ranching heritage, and home to globally significant cave paintings. And it’s an ecological wonder, a last stronghold for aquatic crea...

Wildfires burn landscapes, but they also sear themselves into memory, and many Big Bend National Park enthusiasts remember the South Rim 4 Fire of April 2021. It began near a backcountry campsite, suggesting a possible human cause, and burned across 1,300 acres of the Chisos Mountains. It was the most intense blaze in the storied range in decades.

Broken pieces of prehistoric pottery – known to archeologists as “potsherds” – are striking artifacts. As fragments of painted vessels, they vividly evoke Native American life, in both its aesthetic and practical dimensions.