Category: Earth

Approximately 155 million years ago, a 5000 km piece of continent broke off from western Australia, leaving behind a basin hidden below the ocean known as the Argo Abyssal Plain.

This underwater feature lends its name to the newly formed continent…

Revealed by 3D seismic imaging, the newly-discovered water reservoir lies 3.2 km (2 miles) under the ocean floor off the coast of New Zealand, where it may be dampening a major earthquake fault that faces the country’s North Island. The…

While it is known that for diamonds to form there needs to be carbon deep in the Earth, and for these diamonds to turn pink they must be subjected to forces from colliding tectonic plates, Curtin University researchers have found the third…

Phosphate minerals such as those in the apatite group tend to be the dominant forms of phosphorus in minerals on the Earth’s surface. Phosphates can be created from phosphides during high-energy events, such as lightning and impacts. New…

The Cave of Crystals is a large chamber containing giant crystals in the Naica Mine, located in Mexico’s State of Chihuahua.

The chamber was discovered in April 2000 during mining operations to excavate a new tunnel in search of deposits of…

Researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt have found a meteorite crater in the grounds of a winery near the town of Béziers in Southern France.

The crater is a round 200-metre-wide depression with a depth of 30 metres, which was formed by the…

The Eye of the Sahara, also known as the Richat Structure and the Eye of Africa, is a geological feature in the Sahara Desert’s Adrar Plateau, located in west–central Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

The structure is an eroded elliptical dome…

The El Ali meteorite, a 15.2-ton iron meteorite found in 2020 near the tiny town of El Ali in Somalia, contains at least two new minerals: elaliite and elkinstantonite.

66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs.

New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the…