Vascular plants may have contributed to shaping Earth’s atmosphere long before trees evolved.
fossils & paleontology
Posted inNews
How Animals May Have Conquered Snowball Earth
We know there were animals during Earth’s chilliest era. The question is, What did they look like?
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Fluid Dynamics of Tiny, Ancient Marine Animals
Water flow simulations using 3D models of fossils yield new clues to the evolution of organisms known as medusozoans.
Posted inNews
A Mysterious Dome Reveals Clues to Australia’s Miocene History
The Nullarbor Plain has been relatively untouched by geological forces, leaving traces of the continent’s deep past.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Magnetofossils Unveil Paleoredox Conditions in Extreme Climate
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a thermal pulse about 56 million years ago, is an analog for future global warming. A new magnetofossil study shows progressive ocean deoxygenation.
Posted inNews
A Spike in Wildfires Contributed to the End-Permian Extinction
An upward trend in fossilized charcoal indicates that wildfires may have contributed to extinctions during the Great Dying.
Posted inNews
Cretaceous Charcoal Gives a Glimpse of Plant Evolution
New data from vegetal charcoal in northwest India supports the theory of paleowildfires as a global phenomenon and an evolutionary force for biodiversity.
Posted inFeatures
When Climate Ruled the Dinosaurs of Grand Staircase
Living in Geologic Time: Navigate the prolific boneyards and shifting boundaries of Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.
Posted inNews
Mammoths Lost Their Steppe Habitat to Climate Change
Ancient plant and animal DNA buried in Arctic sediments preserve a 50,000-year history of Arctic ecosystems, suggesting that climate change contributed to mammoth extinction.
Posted inNews
Greener, Wetter Arabia Was a Crossroads of Early Human Migration
Hand axes, hippo bones, and a stack of ancient lake beds show that arid Arabia experienced intervals of humid weather, spurring pulses of human migration over the past 400,000 years.