When Sergio García-Dils de la Vega kissed his girlfriend, Pilar Orche, goodbye at the entrance to Krubera Cave, he promised to return the next day. But after teammate Bernard Tourte bruised his ...

This story appears in the February 2012 issue of National Geographic magazine. She is lying in a cave, dying. Legs and arms but knobby sticks, Lidia Maiyu is curled up close to the campfire.

Marina stood at the mouth of the Rising Star cave and looked inside. Outside, it was the rainy season in this grassland part of South Africa, home to jackals and porcupines and cobra snakes and ...

Our drive to understand the evolutionary history of life on Earth leads us to search for clues deep underground. Cave divers are at the forefront of this research, helping us access some of the ...