82 Million Tons in 100 Seconds

Abandoned coal seams have been burning underground for decades, venting steam and smoke. The fires are impossible to extinguish. Thermal sensors map the underground inferno as it slowly consumes seams that powered turn-of-century industry.

For 6,000 years, Blackfoot hunters drove buffalo over this cliff. The bone layer at the base is 10 meters deep, containing millions of animals. Sophisticated drive lanes extending kilometers prove this was engineering, not mere hunting.

Wind erosion exposed 13,000-year-old trackways of mammoths, horses, camels, and their human hunters. The tracks show a Clovis hunter stalking prey across mudflats. Footprints that record the exact moment of an Ice Age hunt.

The largest coralroot orchid, it parasitizes fungi in conifer forests. Its striped flowers are yellowish with purple stripes. Orchids evolving elaborate flowers despite having no leaves and living off fungi.

The Banff Springs snail lives only in five thermal springs within Banff National Park, the smallest range of any known animal. Each spring population is genetically distinct. Conservation requires maintaining precise water temperatures.

Iron-rich cold springs that deposit ochre in vivid orange and red beds. First Nations collected pigment here for millennia, trading it across half the continent. The ochre beds are still accumulating, growing centimeters per century.