Alaska's 1964 earthquake lifted parts of the seafloor high enough to create new freshwater ponds, and marine sticklebacks moved into them; within 50 years the fish had evolved almost as far from their ocean ancestors as freshwater populations thousands of years older
In 1903, a mining engineer staked a claim on Arizona's Meteor Crater, convinced a fortune in iron lay beneath the floor, and spent 26 years drilling for a meteorite that had mostly vaporized on impact — his family still owns the crater today, and science later proved him right about everything except the treasure
Biologists drove 19 burrowing owls evicted by a Phoenix housing project 50 miles into a 10,000-acre solar complex and lowered them into 40 plastic burrows — every female laid eggs within a month, and 29 chicks fledged the first summer, because open ground under panels hides no predator from an owl