Category: Earth

How did rocks rust on Earth and turn red? A Rutgers-led study has shed new light on the important phenomenon and will help address questions about the Late Triassic climate more than 200 million years ago, when greenhouse gas levels were high…

The temperature of a planet is linked with the diversity of life that it can support. MIT geologists have now reconstructed a timeline of the Earth’s temperature during the early Paleozoic era, between 510 and 440 million years ago — a…

Large parts of today’s Sahara Desert were green thousands of years ago. Prehistoric engravings of giraffes and crocodiles testify to this, as does a stone-age cave painting in the desert that even shows swimming humans.

However, these…

Once upon a time, seasons in Gale Crater probably felt something like those in Iceland. But nobody was there to bundle up more than 3 billion years ago.

The ancient Martian crater is the focus of a study by Rice University scientists comparing…

Around AD 1085 AD, along the southern rim of Northern Arizona’s elevated Colorado Plateau a volcano erupted, forever changing ancient Puebloan fortunes and all nearby life.

Among the 600 or so volcanoes that dot the landscape of the San…

Around 120 million years ago, the earth experienced an extreme environmental disruption that choked oxygen from its oceans.

Known as oceanic anoxic event (OAE) 1a, the oxygen-deprived water led to a minor — but significant — mass extinction…

Scientists striving to understand how and when volcanoes might erupt face a challenge: many of the processes take place deep underground in lava tubes churning with dangerous molten Earth. Upon eruption, any subterranean markers that could have…

Scientists suggest that a small group of volcanic islands in Alaska’s Aleutian chain might be part of a single, undiscovered giant volcano.

If the researchers’ suspicions are correct, the newfound volcanic caldera would belong to the same…

Geoscientists have long known that some parts of the continents formed in the Earth’s deep past, but the speed in which land rose above global seas — and the exact shapes that land masses formed — have so far eluded experts.

But now, through…

Doggerland, dubbed “Britain’s Atlantis” is a submerged landmass beneath what is now the North Sea, that once connected Britain to continental Europe.

The landscape was a diverse mix of gentle hills, marshes, wooded valleys, and swamps,…