Geologists discover rocks bearing the earliest known evidence of water interacting with rock on Earth’s surface.
early Earth
Posted inNews
Earth’s Eccentric Orbit Helped Preserve Rare Soft-Tissue Fossils
Cyclical changes in Earth’s orbit helped to preserve rare fossils in Morocco.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Southern Hemisphere Sediments Show Surprising Pliocene Cyclicity
New, high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions with 100,000-year rhythms may offer insights into how Earth’s climate system operated during a time when the planet was warmer than it is today.
Posted inNews
Scientists Discover Pristine Collection of Soft-Tissue Fossils
The fossils include jellyfish, box jellies, branched algae, and sponges, which are underrepresented in or missing from other deposits.
Posted inFeatures
Isotope Geochemists Glimpse Earth’s Impenetrable Interior
Painstaking measurements of isotopes and their relative abundance in rocks have illuminated the hidden inner Earth and our planet’s origins and shadowy past for much of the preceding century.
Posted inScience Updates
A Deeper Investment for Deep Time Science
Seven proposals recently funded by the National Science Foundation will ensure more access to laboratories that specialize in geochronology.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Unraveling the Origins of Australia’s Ancient Mountain Chains
New data synthesis suggests that varying rates of trench retreat along the margin of the Gondwana supercontinent were responsible for the curvature of the Tasmanide mountain chains.
Posted inNews
How Did Life Learn to Breathe?
Scientists unravel the conditions under which life evolved to breathe oxygen—and the findings have some stellar implications.
Posted inNews
Tiny Algae May Have Prompted a Mass Extinction
Dead algae sinking to the ocean floor may have sequestered carbon 445 million years ago, triggering the glaciation that accompanied the Late Ordovician mass extinction.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Cobalt Key to Development of Early Life on Earth
Cobalt may have played in important role in the early development of life on Earth, and been more available to ancient life than modern due to the higher mafic composition of early continents.