Earth news stories

New research published in Nature Communications suggests that the first cell-like structures on Earth contained radiation-resistant manganese antioxidants, protecting the first cells to evolve.

Fossil tracks found in southern Africa, push the potential evolution of the first birds back to 210 million years ago – during the Triassic (252–201 million years ago), the first epoch of the “Age of Dinosaurs.”

A new analysis by an international team of researchers has added evidence to claims that the world prior to the asteroid blow was anything but paradise, with measures of sulfur in the atmosphere reaching critical levels.

The Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom carries significant cultural mystique. It’s one of the most recognizable mushrooms and also one of the most well-known entheogens…. The Panther Cap is mysterious—little is said about it other than as a passing aside. But, the potent mushroom has as many reasons to merit discussion.

The Great Sand Sea Desert stretches over an area of 72,000km² linking Egypt and Libya. If you find yourself in a particular part of the desert in south-east Libya and south-western parts of Egypt, you’ll spot pieces of yellow glass scattered across the sandy landscape.

A mysterious primate appeared in North America 30 million years ago, long after the continent’s native primates had died out and even longer before the next big influx of primates – humans – would arrive. The study was published in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Some 4.5 billion years or so ago, scientists believe, something big smacked into Earth and knocked it ass over teakettle. The result was a bunch of debris hurled into space, swirling around until it formed the Moon. Of the big object, thought to be the size of Mars, and named Theia, nothing much was left. Or so we thought. See the research here.

In a 1981 Smithsonian Magazine article, geologist Farouk El-Baz theorizes that the ancient Egyptians didn’t create the sphinx from scratch, like the pyramids, but that desert winds formed the overall contours of the sphinx and the ancient stonemasons gave the rock a celestial facelift. Now, scientists from New York University have tested that theory…See the study here.

As policymakers, governments, NGOs and activists work to craft urgent responses to protect tropical forests…the report says that “their efforts will fail as long as those committed to environmental protection neglect to recognize, and grapple with, the elephant in the room”—namely “the global system of criminalized drug prohibition, popularly known as the ‘war on drugs.’”

Image from:Pyschoactive Drugs.jpg uploaded by Thoric. (Wiki Commons)

Sometimes, years of painstaking excavation work are required to uncover the artifacts of the past – and sometimes, as with a recent earthquake in Mexico City, much of the hard digging work is done by nature.

A US team of astrobiologists, philosophers, a mineralogist, a theoretical physicist, and a data scientist describe the “missing law” of nature in an intriguing new peer-reviewed paper.

Scientists at Yale and the Southwest Research Institute (SRI) say they’ve hit the jackpot with some valuable new information about the story of gold. Details are provided in a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Analysis of ancient tree rings from the French Alps has revealed a massive solar storm – the largest ever identified to date – occurred about 14,300 years ago.

The world’s most diverse forest, the Amazon, may also host more than 10,000 records of pre-Columbian earthworks (constructed prior to the arrival of Europeans), according to a new study.

Paleolithic human populations survived even in the coldest and driest upland parts of Spain, according to a study published October 4, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Manuel Alcaraz-Castaño of the University of Alcalá, Spain, Javier Aragoncillo-del Rió of the Molina-Alto Tajo UNESCO Global Geopark, Spain and colleagues.

Fluorescence in mammals is much more common than previously thought, new research suggests.