Earth news stories

NZ to launch world-first climate change rules
15th April 2021 | bbc.co.uk | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

New Zealand is to become the world’s first country to bring in a law forcing its financial firms to report on the effects of climate change.

How to Survive a Killer Asteroid
12th April 2021 | wired.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs would probably have killed you too—unless you were in the exact right place and had made the exact right plans.

Asteroid, Volcano or Both? Scientists Can’t Agree on the True Dinosaur Killer
9th April 2021 | discovermagazine.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

A 6-mile-wide space rock and colossal eruptions racked Earth at the same fateful moment. Scientists have tried for decades to determine the primary suspect behind the Cretaceous Extinction.

String theorist Michio Kaku: A ‘theory of everything’ is within our grasp
6th April 2021 | theguardian.com | Earth, Humans, Space, Tech

The physicist on Newton finding inspiration amid the great plague, how the multiverse can unite religions, ‘reaching out to aliens is a terrible idea’ and why a ‘theory of everything’ is within our grasp.

The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Created the Amazon Rain Forest
3rd April 2021 | scientificamerican.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Fossilized pollen and leaves reveal that the meteorite that caused the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs also reshaped South America’s plant communities to yield the planet’s largest rain forest

Antarctica asteroid impact from 430,000 years ago discovered by scientists
2nd April 2021 | imperial.ac.uk | Ancient, Earth

Space scientists have discovered extra-terrestrial particles which point to a medium-sized asteroid impact in Antarctica 430,000 years ago.

Scientists zero in on the role of volcanoes in the demise of dinosaurs
30th March 2021 phys.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

Earth has experienced five major mass extinction events over the past 500 million years. Massive volcanic eruptions have been identified as the major driver of the environmental changes that precipitated at least three of these extinction events.

Boy finds fossil up to 500m years old in his West Midlands garden
28th March 2021 | theguardian.com | Ancient, Earth, Humans

A six-year-old boy has found a fossil dating back millions of years in his garden after receiving a fossil-hunting kit for Christmas

Did ancient primates walk alongside T. rex? New evidence backs up theory.
28th March 2021 | nationalgeographic.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

The oldest known primate fossils were dated to just after the extinction event 66 million years ago—suggesting some primate ancestors lived even longer ago.

Fossils Reveal Cephalopods May Be 30 Million Years Older Than We Thought
25th March 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

The class of marine animals known as cephalopoda – which today includes squids, octopuses, and cuttlefishes – could have been around on Earth 30 million years earlier than previously thought, according to new research.

Fungi are key to our survival. Are we doing enough to protect them?
21st March 2021 | nationalgeographic.com | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

For almost a decade, one lone mushroom was classified as an endangered species, and scientists say more could be in trouble.

Image from Sasata (Wiki Commons)

Meet the swirlon, a new kind of matter that bends the laws of physics
19th March 2021 | livescience.com | Animal Life, Earth, Humans

Fish school, insects swarm and birds fly in murmurations. Now, new research finds that on the most basic level, this kind of group behavior forms a new kind of active matter, called a swirlonic state.

Arctic was once lush and green, could be again, new research shows
19th March 2021 | eurekalert.org | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth, Humans

As the Arctic warms much faster than everywhere else on the planet in response to climate change, the findings, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may not only be a glimpse of the past but a snapshot of our potential future.

Gigantic Stone ‘Tiger Stripes’ Etched Across Ethiopia Pose an Ancient Mystery
18th March 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Earth

If we want to predict our planet’s future under climate change, we must better understand what has happened on Earth before, even hundreds of thousands of years in the past.

‘Rarest of the rare’ dinosaur fossil found brooding on its eggs
16th March 2021 | livescience.com | Ancient, Animal Life, Earth

About 70 million years ago, an ostrich-like dinosaur brooding atop a nest of blue-green eggs met its doom, perishing with its nearly-hatched babies in what is now southern China.

Ancient Plants Buried a Mile Under Greenland’s Ice Are a Grim Warning From The Past
16th March 2021 | sciencealert.com | Ancient, Earth

The Greenland ice sheet has been there for a long time. As near as we can tell, it could have been extensive as early as 45 million years ago.

News stories covering the environment, plant life, and the Earth itself.