Earth news stories

Silverpit crater off Yorkshire coast was caused by cathedral-sized asteroid that set off 100-metre tsunami 43m years ago. The findings are published in Nature Communications.

Glass strewn across southern Australia has been revealed to be the remnants of a previously unknown asteroid impact which happened about 11 million years ago (mya)…The specimens analysed in the new study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters are ‘tektites’…

The findings, published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, unveil a previously undocumented Paleolithic presence in Ayvalık and more importantly could redocument our species’ migration into the continent.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, describes a powerful new mechanism for increasing the extent of effective area-based protection by piggybacking on community management of natural resources. The paper is titled “Community-based management expands ecosystem protection footprint in Amazonian forests.”

From butterflies to grasshoppers, many delicate little things that run our world are in dire trouble. Not just in regions where human activity directly affects the landscape, but even in remote, human-free zones, a new study finds. The remote insect study was published in Ecology.

Reporting in PLOS One, UC Santa Barbara Emeritus Professor of Earth Science James Kennett and collaborators present their findings of shocked quartz—grains of sand deformed by extreme pressures and temperatures—at three classic Clovis culture archaeological sites in the United States: Murray Springs in Arizona, Blackwater Draw in New Mexico and Arlington Canyon in California’s Channel Islands.

Columbian mammoths in Mexico are genetically different from those in the U.S. and Canada, surprise DNA study reveals. The research was published Aug. 28 in the journal Science.

This discovery, published in the journal PLOS One, offers new insights into the complexity of early Homo sapiens’ interaction with plant resources—not only as food but also for more sophisticated uses such as dyeing and medicine. Indeed, Isatis tinctoria L., has a long history of use in both dyeing and healing.

Even the words we use to express our connection to nature are dwindling as the demands of modern life isolate us from the non-human world, according to a new study by psychologist Miles Richardson of the University of Derby in the UK. The research was published in Earth.

The research takes a new look at a species known as Denisovans. These ancient relatives of humans lived from what is today Russia south to Oceania and west to the Tibetan Plateau.The researchers published their results in the journal Science.

Analysis of ocean sediments has surfaced geochemical clues in line with the possibility that an encounter with a disintegrating comet 12,800 years ago in the Northern Hemisphere triggered rapid cooling of Earth’s air and ocean. Christopher Moore of the University of South Carolina, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the journal PLOS One on August 6, 2025.

Ötzi the Iceman may have come to an unfortunate end while crossing the Alps more than 5,000 years ago, but thanks to his well-preserved remains, he’s still helping us understand our past. A new digital reconstruction of the mummy’s ribcage is providing fresh insights into modern human evolution.

The ancient meteor impact that formed Arizona’s Barringer Crater sent shock waves through the Grand Canyon — likely triggering a landslide that dammed the Colorado River, a new study suggests. The study, published on July 15 in the journal Geology, has linked two major events that were thought to be completely unrelated.

The environment minister, Murray Watt, hosted more than a dozen ambassadors from countries on the world heritage committee on Monday as he ramped up lobbying efforts to get the Murujuga rock art complex inscribed on the world heritage list.

A new, advanced technique for studying fossils has revealed that squids evolved more than 50 million years earlier than previously thought and dominated Earth’s ancient seas. The new study was published in the journal Science.

An obscure rock formation on the eastern shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay may contain the oldest known rocks on Earth, a new study claims. Their findings are published June 26 in the journal Science.