The animated adventure Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is bound to mislead countless youth when it comes to dinosaur history. Dinosaurs were long gone by the time the Ice Age rolled around. At least Manny the wooly mammoth, the movie’s reluctant hero, pays lip service to that fact. He says to one rampaging dino: “I liked you better when you were extinct!”

And when did the dinosaurs make their final goodbye? To get the scoop, we spoke to our Land of the Lost expert Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a paleontologist at the University of Maryland’s Department of Geology who specializes in carnivorous dinosaur evolution and adaptation and focuses on Tyrannosaurus rex and its relatives.

More than a billion people in the developing world need glasses. But opticians aren’t exactly on every block in sub-Saharan Africa. In some places the ratio is one to one million residents. Pondering this problem, Oxford University physics professor Joshua Silver came up with a brilliantly simple solution: a pair of eyeglasses, currently costing about $19, that the wearer can adjust. Silicone oil is injected into a gap between two sheets of plastic until the lens provides sharp vision. The inventor’s field research shows the correction can be better than that of prefab glasses sold at a store.

Congratulations! The Your Shot special issue hit newsstands today (June 30). We may have done the editing, writing and design, but you took the pictures—101 of our favorite photographs submitted by readers since Your Shot debuted in March 2006.

How did we pick the pics we picked? There's no magic formula. Personally, I'm drawn to images that make me feel something, be it joy, sorrow, suprise or wonder. So that's how I structured the issue: four chapters, four emotions. The selection process took months, but for photo editor Susan Welchman and I, it was worth every moment. These two videos explain why:

1. Susan and I describe why we love editing Your Shot.

2. Susan and I share some favorite images from more than 100,000 Your Shot submissions.

—Oliver Uberti

The EPA is worried about fireworks. It’s not so much the noise and smoke—it’s the toxic chemical that provides the oxygen needed to burn the fuel.

The culprit is perchlorate, and the fear is it could seep into drinking water. Early research suggests it might hinder the thyroid’s production of growth hormones, notably in children and pregnant women. “It deserves more study,” says EPA spokesman Rick Wilkin.

An update from photographer Joel Sartore:

Of all the characters I met while doing State Fairs last summer, none impressed me more than Greg Carpenter, aka "Dr. Danger". One of the last of the true daredevils, Greg makes his living going from town to town and doing death-defying feats at public venues. At the Iowa State Fair, Dr. Danger not only lit himself on fire, but also jumped a car through a wall of flame, crashing into a stack of cars on the other side. Sound dangerous? It is.

Last Saturday the risks caught up with him when a car jump went terribly wrong in Abilene, Texas. The vehicle he was driving made it to the pile of cars that absorb the energy from his jump, but then his car literally fell sideways off the pile, landing on the driver's side and putting Greg in very serious condition at Hendrick Medical Center in Abilene.

Not only does Greg need your thoughts and prayers, he could also use your money. As a professional daredevil, he cannot get health insurance.

Any donations would be appreciated. Please send them to:

Greg Carpenter, AKA Dr. Danger
c/o Ads In Gear
P.O. Box 684608
Austin, TX 78768

—Joel Sartore

When it comes to the art of egg decoration, Mother Nature is the original master. The patterns and lines that adorn many eggs—like those of murres, grackles, and jacanas—are positively calligraphic. These markings, which get their pigment from bile acids and broken-down red blood cells, are applied during the tail end of the 20 hours during which the egg is in the shell-gland region of the oviduct. A shell that emerges encircled with wispy streaks (above) means the egg rotated while the inking occurred.

In Year One, Zed (Jack Black) and Oh (Michael Cera) traipse across Biblical history after fleeing their village, narrowly escaping death, slavery, and circumcision en route to discovering their destinies.

Their final destination—where the majority of the movie takes place—is Sodom, known as the sinful city destroyed by God in “fire and brimstone.” Pop Omnivore was interested: Did Sodom really exist? To find out, we interviewed Rupert Chapman, head librarian of the Middle East department at the British Museum and co-author of the book Archaeology and the Bible, which examines how the findings of archaeology have confirmed—or refuted—the Bible.

Just north of Mexico in the Arizona desert, a crimson-hued pond is a reminder of past mining wealth and current pollution. Up to hundreds of yards long, with a service road jutting onto a promontory, it holds storm water that fell on mine tailings—crushed rock largely stripped of valuable metal. Oxidation causes the Technicolor effect. Phelps Dodge mined copper in Bisbee for decades, until profits dried up in the mid-1970s. Under state order, the company must improve contaminated groundwater caused by high sulfate levels in now flooded underground mines. It also hopes to restore the landscape to a normal tint by late 2010. —Chris Carroll

Highlights from the July issue of National Geographic: the lost city of Angkor, manta rays in the Maldives, Garrison Keillor goes to the state fair, the fire and ice of the New Zealand park where Lord of the Rings was filmed, giant telescopes; and Serbs look to the future.

Trademarks are ubiquitous—we use trademarked products every day, all day long. We use Google for Internet searches, Kleenex to blow our noses, and we wear Levis. I look up words in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary—itself a trademarked name—which defines trademark as “a device (as a word) pointing distinctly to the origin or ownership of merchandise to which it is applied and legally reserved to the exclusive use of the owner as maker or seller.”

There’s no question we love the Atlantic bluefin tuna (above). The problem is we love it only for its taste. Flopped out in a Japanese market, the best specimens of the sleek fish, which grow up to 15 feet long, can fetch $100,000 or more.