Showing posts with the label
Earth Science
A 2-billion-year-old chunk of sea salt provides new evidence for the transformation of Earth's atmosphere into an oxygenated environment capable of supporting life as we know it. A sample of 2-bi…
Marine scientists have uncovered evidence of one of the largest floods in Earth's history in the central Mediterranean seafloor. Artistic interpretation of the flooding of the Mediterranean throu…
Engineers working on Britain’s new high speed railway have discovered an ancient, sub-tropical coastline dating back 56 million years. A depiction of what the area would have looked like during the P…
Memories of the largest lava flood in the history of Iceland, recorded in an apocalyptic medieval poem, were used to drive the island's conversion to Christianity, new research suggests. Part of …
Methane (CH4) is a potent greenhouse gas, which is roughly 30 times more harmful to the climate than carbon dioxide (CO2). Both gases are produced in thawing permafrost as dead animal and plant remai…
History can tell us a lot about environmental upheaval, say Princeton University historians John Haldon and Lee Mordechai. What is missing in today's debate about climate change is using what we …
Researchers at Queen's University Belfast have discovered that the first people to inhabit Malta arrived 700 years earlier than history books indicate. Xaghra Mandible [Credit: Queen's Univer…
Interest in human evolution has stimulated new geological work in the southern rift valley of Kenya. A new Geological Society of America Bulletin article by Anna K. Behrensmeyer and colleagues prese…
The extreme wet and dry periods Mongolia has experienced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are rare but not unprecedented and future droughts may be no worse, according to an international re…
It may not rank among the all-time greatest dramas, but the history of ice on Greenland has been a source of scientific controversy for more than a decade. Iceberg off the coast of Greenland [Credit:…
Imagine a year in Africa that summer never arrives. The sky takes on a gray hue during the day and glows red at night. Flowers do not bloom. Trees die in the winter. Large mammals like antelope becom…
A new experiment by Iowa State University's Elizabeth Swanner that evaluates the reduction of iron in prehistoric oceans may reinterpret the conditions under which iron-rich sedimentary rock is f…
Core samples taken during an international ocean drilling expedition are yielding the most high-resolution, extended record of continental rifting ever obtained. IODP Expedition 381 collected 1.6 kil…
