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Castle Near Kilgarvan, Ireland
Photograph by Sam Abell
The green countryside of County Kerry, Ireland, slowly reclaims a castle near the village of Kilgarvan. Taking its present name from the Irish Cill Garbháin, or Church of St. Garbhan, Kilgarvan rests on the banks of the Roughty River, which flows into Kenmare Bay.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Ireland on Fast-Forward,” September 1994, National Geographic magazine)
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Mandrill, Central Africa
Photograph by Michael Nichols
A mandrill, tethered on a rope in central Africa, reaches for the camera. These colorful primates are threatened. They are often hunted as bushmeat, and many Africans consider them to be a delicacy. Mandrills are feeling the squeeze of spreading agriculture and human settlement—both are shrinking their rain forest homeland.
(Photo shot on assignment for "Clearing,” March 2001, National Geographic magazine)
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Velvet Worms, Hamburg, Germany
Photograph by O. Louis Mazzatenta
These intertwined velvet worms, or onychophorans, are living fossils, holdovers of the Cambrian explosion of life-forms that occurred about 530 million years ago. Velvet worms became land dwellers some 250 million years ago but survive today only in dark, moist habitats such as the leaf litter in Costa Rican forests. These worms were photographed at the University of Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany.
(Photo shot on assignment for "Explosion of Life: The Cambrian Period,” October 1993, National Geographic magazine)
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Dock and Palm Trees, Tahiti
Photograph by Jodi Cobb
A dock juts out to a small palm island, surrounded by the jewel-blue waters of Tahiti. Tahiti is just one of 118 islands and atolls that make up French Polynesia, a semi-autonomous territory of France. With its claim here and on other Pacific territories, France is the second largest presence (after the United States) in the Pacific.
(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Charting a New Course—French Polynesia,” June 1997, National Geographic magazine)
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Northern Lights, Trapper Creek, Alaska
Photograph by Thomas J. Abercrombie
Spectacular sky shows brighten the long winter nights for Alaska's year-round residents. This display of northern lights sets the horizon aglow at Trapper Creek. Stars of the Big Dipper, upper left, wheeling through the December sky, show as streaks in this ten-minute exposure. Residents of the region witness dozens of auroras yearly; those in the Point Barrow area farther north see as many as a hundred.
(Photo shot on assignment for "Nomad in Alaska's Outback," April 1969, National Geographic magazine)
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Panda Yawning, Kunming, China
Photograph by Jodi Cobb
A giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) yawns in its enclosure at the Yuantong Zoo in Kunming, China. Wild pandas live only in remote, mountainous regions in central China. These high forests of bamboo (their primary food) are cool and wet—just as pandas like it.
(Photo shot on assignment for the National Geographic book Journey into China, 1982)
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Statue of Christ of the Abyss, Florida
Photograph by Bates Littlehales
Softly aglow in sea-washed sunlight, Christ of the Abyss stands 30 feet (9 meters) down in the Atlantic in Florida's John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park. Visitors to the sanctuary don masks and fins or view the sea life through the glass bottoms of tour boats.
(Photo shot on assignment for "The Lower Keys, Florida's 'Out Islands,'" January 1971, National Geographic magazine)
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Oil Refinery, Ras Tanurah, Saudi Arabia
Photograph by Thomas J. Abercrombie
Gas flares fire the night at Saudi Aramco's Ras Tanurah refinery, north of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Each day sparkling towers here produce more than half a million barrels of refined petroleum, the largest output of any refinery in the Middle East.
(Photo shot on assignment for "Saudi Arabia—Beyond the Sands of Mecca," January 1966, National Geographic magazine)
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