Earth news stories

Scientists in Egypt have identified a new species of four-legged whale that lived around 43 million years ago.

The strength and direction of Earth’s magnetic field has changed a lot over the millennia. Scientists are eager to study its past patterns to work out how the field might change in the future – a pretty vital research field, considering this magnetic shield protects us from damaging cosmic radiation.

About 66 million years ago, an estimated 6-mile-wide (9.6 kilometers) object slammed into Earth, triggering a cataclysmic series of events that resulted in the demise of non-avian dinosaurs.  Now, scientists think they know where that object came from.

Intricate patterns of tubular structures discovered in giant ancient reefs may be the remnants of prehistoric horny sponges and the oldest known fossils of animal life on Earth.

Charles Darwin famously discussed the “imperfections” of the geological record in his book On The Origin of Species. He correctly pointed out that unless conditions are just right, it’s unlikely for organisms to be preserved as fossils, even those with bones and shells.

Iceland may be the last exposed remnant of a nearly Texas-size continent – called Icelandia – that sank beneath the North Atlantic Ocean about 10 million years ago, according to a new theory proposed by an international team of geophysicists and geologists.

Researchers exploring the Indian Ocean have discovered the remains of a collapsed underwater volcano with an uncanny resemblance to the all-seeing “Eye of Sauron” from J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings,” as well as two other seafloor structures named after places in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Around 74,000 years ago, a “supereruption” on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, blasted out an estimated 5,000 cubic kilometres of magma.

Researchers have discovered the fossilised remains of 3.4-billion-year-old methane-cycling microbes that lived in a hydrothermal system beneath the ancient seafloor – the oldest microfossils of this type found to date.

Palaeontologist Tim Ewin is standing in a quarry, recalling the calamity that’s written in the rocks under his mud-caked boots.

For almost 2 decades, genomes isolated from fossils have galvanized the study of human evolution. Yet despite vast improvements in retrieving and analyzing that DNA, researchers have deciphered whole genomes from just 23 archaic humans, 18 of them Neanderthals. This week, however…

Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that changes in Earth’s orbit may have allowed complex life to emerge and thrive during the most hostile climate episode the planet has ever experienced.

Climate change has already increased the frequency and severity of hurricanes and other extreme weather events around the world. — But there’s a smaller, less splashy threat on the horizon that could wreak havoc on America’s coasts.

Early work by UK scientists indicates the Winchcombe object dates back to the very beginning of the Solar System, some 4.6 billion years ago.

A new study suggests that prehistoric elephants like the mastodon and woolly mammoth were wiped out by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than being hunted to extinction by early humans.