Earth news stories

A new study on ancient food production in tropical Belize, co-led by the University of New Mexico and published in Communications Earth & Environment, provides evidence that people in the Maya-speaking region were dedicated farmers thousands of years before the first large villages emerged.

After using a technique called molecular clock analysis, researchers have proposed that the origin of animals could be 200 million years earlier than thought. The study was published Friday (Oct. 2) in the journal Science Advances.

Imagine picking up a black stone from an old riverbed in Brazil. Its surface shines like glass, but inside it is riddled with tiny holes. Break it open, and you would find not one crystal, but a tightly packed mass of miniature diamonds. Where did this strange stone come from? A study suggests that an ancient impact may have helped carry carbon-rich material deep into Earth.

A rock art enthusiast used an image processing technique that scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed to improve the detail of satellite photos of Mars’ rocky surface to reveal ancient, faded artwork here on Earth.

Scientists are battling over whether supposedly simple organisms should be considered ‘intelligent’…The battle is fraught, sometimes dirty. Michael Levin, a Tufts University professor who is perhaps the most polarising figure among the biogenic group, believes that every individual cell is intelligent and cognitive in its own way; for this, he told me he regularly receives hate mail. (One letter called him “dangerously insane”.)

If you ask a scientist how life appeared on Earth, they will usually begin the story in one of two places: A warm, mineral-rich pool on the surface of our primordial planet. Or a deep-sea vent pumping warm, hydrogen-rich fluid through the ocean floor. Both tales are highly engaging, but only one holds any water, according to a provocative new take by geochemist Benjamin Tutolo from the University of Calgary. Tutolo’s perspective is now laid out in the peer-reviewed journal PNAS.

When you think about it, it seems remarkable that humanity is still here. Over the last few hundred thousand years, the world has changed a lot, sometimes in ways that might seem difficult for evolution to keep pace with…”Our study provides one of the first paleogenomic frameworks for investigating ancient adaptations in Upper Paleolithic East Eurasians,” the researchers write in a paper published in Science Advances, “revealing an evolutionary legacy from a colder past in present-day humans.”

Some cynodonts may have been giving birth to live young much sooner in evolutionary history than previously assumed. A new Frontiers in Mammal Science study has offered the first compelling evidence that cynodonts may have been viviparous—a reproductive mode characterized by live birth.

Now, a new LIDAR survey suggests that civilization was even larger than archaeologists imagined, hinting at a people that built as many as 30,000 earthworks and had a peak population of up to 3 million people around 200 CE. The findings have been published in Nature.

At first glance, Earth’s biggest geological disasters seem to have little in common beyond their sheer scale. But for decades, scientists have wondered whether these seemingly unrelated events might actually follow a hidden rhythm stretching back hundreds of millions of years…Now, an analysis published in Evolving Earth revisits that evidence using updated geological timescales and statistical methods.

The GunaiKurnai, an Australian Aboriginal nation, are the acknowledged traditional custodians of Gippsland and the southern Victorian Alps. Within their territory are caves known from 19th-century ethnographic reports and oral traditions to have been settings for magic, healing and cursing rituals by powerful learned women and men called “mulla-mullung,” as well as by other spiritual practitioners. The new study was published in Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology.

A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.

Joël Lapointe was using Google Maps to plan a camping trail through Quebec’s Côte-Nord region when he stumbled across a large indentation. Now, scientists have confirmed that the pit was indeed a meteor impact crater that dates back roughly 390 million years.

For 65m years, this landscape has sheltered all manner of astonishing creatures. But some of the most fascinating life forms found here are even older. Before animals walked the Earth or trees began converting carbon dioxide into oxygen, fungi helped to create the conditions necessary for complex life on our planet. “People often say that fungi grow in the forest,” Dr Alison Pouliot, a mycologist, tells me as we inhale cool air perfumed with the gentle spice of sassafras. “But there wouldn’t be a forest without fungi. Fungi are the ecosystem engineers that created the foundation for the forest.”

A hidden ring of stones or timbers detected beneath peat at Machrie Moor could represent a previously unknown Neolithic or Bronze Age monument.

The long-held idea that rainforests held a minor role in our species’ evolution is changing — and our ability to adapt to these tropical areas may give insight about ‘what it means to be uniquely human.’