A new study mined museum collections to investigate just how sooty the air in the United States has been for the past 135 years.
animals
Posted inNews
Giant Snails’ Century-Old Shells Recorded Monsoon Rainfall
Researchers explored past precipitation in India using shells from very large land snails collected there in 1918 and preserved in a British museum.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Follow Earthworm Tracks to Better Simulate Water Flow in Soils
Incorporating paths carved by the critters and by tree roots helps scientists align simulations of tropical soils more closely with real-world data.
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Birds Flock to Areas of Good Weather Across the United States
A survey of birds over several decades shows that many bird species migrate or shrink their habitat to avoid drought and storms.
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Bat Guano: A Possible New Source for Paleoclimate Reconstructions
Nitrogen isotopes within samples of bat excrement accurately reflect modern precipitation patterns. So could guano serve as a paleoclimate record?
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Cores from Crater Tied to Dinosaur Demise Validate Impact Theory
Drilling into the famous, deeply buried Chicxulub crater off Mexico, researchers found deformed and porous granite that opens new avenues of research.
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Ant Populations Destabilize Under Warming
In forest experiments in which artificial warming mimicked future climate conditions, heat-tolerant ants thrived, leaving other populations unstable.
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Rock-Chomping Bees Burrow into Sandstone
A previously unknown species of rock-excavating bees, discovered 40 years ago but not reported in the scientific literature, finally gets the spotlight.
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Elephant Seals' Dives Show Slowdown in Ocean Circulation
Data from instruments mounted on elephant seals reveal that melting ice flushes fresh water into the Southern Ocean, suppressing an important arm of the global ocean circulation belt.
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Climate Warming May Have Helped Kill the Dinosaurs
New evidence indicates ancient warming spells that coincided with prodigious volcanism and a powerful meteorite impact, both seen as possible causes of mass extinctions about 66 million years ago.