Earth news stories

Scientists have grown an ancient seed from a cave in the Judean Desert into a tree — and it could belong to a locally-extinct species with medicinal properties mentioned several times in the Bible

Computers truly are wonderful things and powerful but only if they are programmed by a skillful mind. Check this out… there is an algorithm that mimics the growth of slime mold, but a team of researchers has adapted it to model the large-scale structure of the Universe.

Fifty million years ago, lush rainforests blanketed modern-day Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and the tip of South America. Now, researchers have discovered new fossils that reveal which plant species populated these forests and how they adapted to life near the South Pole.

A newly discovered fossil site in the northeast US provides a glimpse into an ancient ecosystem nearly 100 million years older than the first dinosaurs. The exceptionally well-preserved find is described in Nature Communications.

Researchers in Gabon studied tropical plants eaten by wild gorillas – and used also by local human healers – identifying four with medicinal effects. Laboratory studies revealed the plants were high in antioxidants and antimicrobials. One showed promise in fighting superbugs. The research is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

“By growing mycelium into the electronics of a robot, we were able to allow the biohybrid machine to sense and respond to the environment,” says senior researcher Rob Shepherd, a materials scientist at Cornell. This research was published in Science Robotics.

A doughnut-shaped region thousands of kilometers beneath our feet within Earth’s liquid core has been discovered by scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), providing new clues about the dynamics of our planet’s magnetic field. The research is published in Science Advances.

A study by researchers from the Insper Research Institute in São Paulo and the University of Bonn now shows an interesting side effect: where the measures were implemented, not only did deforestation decrease, but so did the number of homicides.

Astronomers have traced the origins of 200 meteorites to five impact craters in two volcanic regions on Mars, known as Tharsis and Elysium.

The significance of ancient human fossils found in Africa is undeniable. But new research questions whether African fossil sites tell the whole story. See the study here.

A new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focuses on testates to better understand the evolution of ecosystems on Earth and predict what the planet may look like in the future.

Scientists have mapped the path of an ancient underwater avalanche which travelled 2,000km across the seafloor off the northwest coast of Africa. The new study appears in Science Advances.

Mysterious zones in the deep mantle where earthquake waves slow to a crawl may actually be everywhere, new research finds.

Population sizes declined sharply during the coldest period, and in the West, Ice Age Europeans even faced extinction, according to the study published August 16 in the journal Science Advances.

Venus and Earth seem like twins who, through dramatically different circumstances and choices, ended up leading dramatically different lives. The research has been published in Nature Geoscience.

Researchers say they’ve recovered one of the world’s oldest known dinosaurs after heavy rains exposed a Herrerasaurid skeleton in southern Brazil.