Earth news stories

Water may have first formed 100–200 million years after the Big Bang, according to a modeling paper published in Nature Astronomy. The authors suggest that the formation of water may have occurred in the universe earlier than previously thought and may have been a key constituent of the first galaxies.

New research has demonstrated the precise relationship between past ice ages and each wobble, tilt, and angle of the planet’s path, unlocking a new tool for predicting the future fluctuations of our global climate. The team’s research has been published in Science.

The earliest evidence that humans inhabited rainforests has been found in Africa, a surprising find which pushes human settlement in these habitats much further back than previously thought…As a result, rainforests have often been overlooked as important habitats in the evolution of early modern humans. New research published in Nature has put a dent in this assumption.

A very rare treat is about to grace Earth’s night skies. On the evening of 28 February 2025, all seven of the other planets in the Solar System will appear in the night sky at the same time, with Saturn, Mercury, Neptune, Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, and Mars all lining up in a neat row – a magnificent sky feast for the eyes known as a great planetary alignment.

In a rare encounter, a young man from an isolated Indigenous tribe approached a riverine community in Brazil’s Amazon, the country’s Indigenous affairs agency and local witnesses said Thursday.

Advanced artificial intelligence is to revolutionise fundamental physics and could open a window on to the fate of the universe, according to Cern’s next director general.

Scientists have found all five nucelobases alongisde minerals essential for life as we know it on the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu. The two teams of researchers who made the discoveries published their findings Jan. 29 in two papers in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The focus of the prospecting campaign was on an area that during the Pleistocene housed a large lake, now completely dried up, with ancient wadis or dry riverbeds crossing the landscape. Egberts collected over 850 artifacts, ranging from very old hand axes from the Early or Old Paleolithic to Levallois reduction flakes from the Middle Paleolithic, all surface material.

A review of the oldest known dinosaurs has revealed that fossil evidence for their origin probably has not yet been discovered. Most of the earliest dinosaur fossils have been found in South America and Africa.

Researchers are investigating who — or what — cut ancient tunnels in sandstone in Brazil and nearby nations.

Footprints measuring 92cm in width found in Mongolia have raised the prospect of an as yet undiscovered skeleton of the largest bipedal dinosaur ever.

I’m a historian of fire, and my reply is that we have both a narrative and an analog. The narrative is the unbroken saga of humanity and fire, a companionship that extends through all our existence as a species. The analog is that humanity’s fire practices have become so vast, especially in recent centuries, that we are creating the fire equivalent of an ice age.

The bones are at least 1.95 million years old but could be up to 2.2 million years old. They may help build a picture of when early human ancestors left Africa and reached Europe and Asia, and the route they took. This has been an area of debate for decades. The paper was published in Nature Communications.

Our new study, published in Australian Archaeology, presents the results of the only known archaeological excavation of one of these rings combined with Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung understanding of these enigmatic places.

An enormous, extremely well preserved dinosaur skull unearthed in China belongs to a never-before-seen species, researchers say.

The first animals with mineral skeletons changed the way sediments develop on Earth forever, according to new research.