Earth news stories

Could elephant-mammoth hybrids roam the tundra? Researchers analyze the genes of several elephant species, and find genes from their extinct ancestors could help save them.

Following the impact, artistic geological processes left behind the Ring of Cenotes, one of the most beautiful natural formations on planet Earth.

Humans shape nature, not only since the onset of industrialization. The influence of humans was debated in Central Africa where major interventions seem to have occurred 2,600 years ago.

It’s been dubbed “the loneliest tree on the planet” because of its remote location, but the Sitka spruce might represent something quite profound about the age in which we live.

‘Molecular clock’ methodology combines evidence on the genetic differences between living species and fossil constraints on the age of their shared ancestors, to establish an evolutionary timescale that sees through gaps in the fossil record.

As much as we tend to panic over the idea of an asteroid crashing into the Earth, one possible explanation for life on Earth is that an asteroid brought it here in the first place.

The giant space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs may have set off a chain of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions on land and undersea, claims a new study that is already dividing scientists.

More than 100 researchers have collaborated to classify the world’s tropical forests according to their evolutionary history.

In a new study, scientists measured mercury concentrations in permafrost cores from Alaska and estimated how much mercury has been trapped in permafrost north of the equator since the last Ice Age.

In a hugely detailed and comprehensive new study, researchers have painted a picture of how around a tenth of Earth’s surface suddenly became covered in roaring fires at a point some 12,800 years ago.

Panspermia, or the theory that life on Earth came after our planet was inseminated with alien biology, could have easily happened.

About 40,000 years ago, the poles made one such unsuccessful attempt, and the last full swap was about 780,000 years ago, so we’re a bit overdue for a pole reversal based on the established pattern.

Scientists have found a new dinosaur species in Egypt, a discovery that promises new insights into Late Cretaceous dinosaur evolution in Africa.

2,000 years ago, people domesticated these plants. Now they’re wild weeds. What happened?

What could have caused the chronological patterning of artifacts – human activity and/or past climate change? These questions are the focus of a new study published today.

This means that part of Australia was attached to and was part of North America, around 1.7 billion years ago.