Chemistry • Ecology • Environment • Evolution • Geosciences
More than a billion years ago, in a shallow basin across what is now northern Ontario, a subtropical lake much like modern-day Death Valley evaporated under the sun’s gentle heat, leaving behind crystals of halite—rock salt. It was a very different world than the one we know today. Bacteria were the dominant form of life […]
The JTRACK international research expedition has uncovered new details as to why a 2011 earthquake northeast of Japan behaved so unusually as it lifted the seafloor and produced a tsunami that devastated coastal communities along with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Some of the first published data from the expedition finds that at the […]
Glaciers are melting worldwide. In some regions, they could even disappear completely. Looking at the number of glaciers disappearing, the Alps could reach their peak loss rate as early as 2033 to 2041. Depending on how sharply the planet warms, this period may mark a time when more glaciers vanish than ever before. Worldwide, the […]
Author: Paul C. Sereno, Professor of Paleontology, University of Chicago Dinosaur “mummies” couldn’t have been further from my mind as I trudged up a grassy knoll on the Zerbst Ranch in east-central Wyoming, followed by University of Chicago undergraduates on a field trip linked to my “Dinosaur Science” course. As a university professor, I realized […]
Author: Tara Djokic, Scientific Officer, Palaeontology, Australian Museum; UNSW Sydney Hidden beneath farmland in the central tablelands of New South Wales lies one of Australia’s most extraordinary fossil sites – McGraths Flat. It dates back between 11 million and 16 million years into the Miocene epoch, a time when many of today’s familiar plants and […]
Deep inside caves, water dripping from the ceiling creates one of nature’s most iconic formations: stalagmites. These pillars of calcite, ranging from centimetres to many meters in height, rise from the cave floor as drip after drip of mineral-rich water deposits a tiny layer of stone. Beyond their beauty—echoed in fanciful nicknames like the “Minaret” […]
When astronauts returned from NASA’s final Apollo moon mission in 1972, some of the samples they collected were sealed and carefully stored away in the hope that future researchers using advanced equipment might analyze them and make new discoveries. Now, researchers report a sulphuric surprise in rock samples taken from the moon’s Taurus Littrow region […]
Biology • Chemistry • Evolution • Geosciences • Microbiology • Planetary Science • Robotics
A new study has revealed potential chemical signatures of ancient Martian microbial life in rocks examined by NASA’s Perseverance rover. The findings, published by a large international team of scientists, focus on a region of Jezero Crater known as the Bright Angel formation—a name chosen from locations in Grand Canyon National Park because of the […]
Biology • Ecology • Environment • Geosciences
Author: Sevrine Sailley, Senior Scientist, Marine Ecosystem Modelling, Plymouth Marine Laboratory Climate change is reshaping fish habitats. Some fish are winners, others are losing out. Fish already face plenty of pressure from overfishing and pollution. Climate change is adding more: warmer waters and shifting food supplies cause what’s known as a predator-prey mismatch. This means […]
The Dead Sea is a confluence of extraordinary conditions: the lowest point on Earth’s land surface, with one of the world’s highest salinities. The high concentration of salt gives it a correspondingly high density, and the water body’s status as the deepest hypersaline lake gives rise to interesting and often temperature-related phenomena below the water’s […]