Earth news stories

A Jurassic graveyard in Patagonia, Argentina, holds more than 100 fossilized eggs and the bones of 80 Mussaurus patagonicus dinosaurs ranging in age from hatchling to adult. The trove of dinosaur remains suggests that these paleo-beasts lived in herds as early as 192 million years ago, a new study finds.

Some of the oldest evidence for modern humans living in rainforests has been found in a cave in Southeast Asia. Researchers analysed fossilised teeth discovered in Laos, revealing that these humans ate fruits and meat as part of an omnivorous diet.

We know that true polar wander (TPW) can occasionally tilt whole planets and moons relative to their axes, but it’s not entirely clear just how often this has happened to Earth. Now a new study presents evidence of one such tilting event that occurred around 84 million years ago – when dinosaurs still walked the Earth.

Exactly how and when people settled in North America is a topic of much fascination for experts, and now a new analysis of ancient documents is shedding light on some lesser known details of this long-contested timeline.

The close of the Eocene roughly 33 million years ago marks a time of great change on Earth. In a slow reversal of what we’re seeing today, temperatures dropped and glaciers stretched their icy fingers towards the equator.

In the beginning, there was … well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our universe has always existed — and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could work.

For the vast majority of animals on Earth, breath is synonymous with life. Yet for the first 2 billion years of our planet’s existence, oxygen was in scarce supply.

A 25m-year-old eagle fossil discovered on a remote outback cattle station in South Australia has been identified as one of the oldest raptor species in the world.

Many local people believe the enormous pit is a prison for genies and a gateway to the underworld.

On Friday, April 13, 2029, Earth will experience a dramatic close encounter with the asteroid 99942 Apophis

In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant.

A new study suggests that all living snakes evolved from a handful of species that survived the giant asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and most other living things at the end of the Cretaceous

Like a bowl of spaghetti noodles spilled across the floor of the North Sea, a vast array of hidden tunnel valleys wind and meander across what was once an ice-covered landscape.

The fossilized web of a 385-million-year-old root network has scientists reimagining what the world’s first forests might once have looked like.

Inside some of our most magnificent trees, miniature worlds are at risk of extinction. The race is on to accelerate trees’ ageing process, so these intricate communities aren’t lost forever

A billion years have vanished from the geological record – and over 152 years after this was first discovered, scientists can’t agree on why.