How did our planet avoid being frozen solid during the early days of our solar system?
paleoclimatology & paleoceanography
Posted inNews
A New Model for an Old Extinction Event
A 3D Earth system model incorporates variables such as temperature and sulfurization to shed light on the end-Permian extinction event.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Using Hematite to Decipher Past Climates and Environments
The magnetic and color properties of the mineral hematite give clues to past environmental conditions and is being used for paleoclimatic reconstruction.
Posted inScience Updates
Rethinking the Search for the Origins of Life
Early Earth conditions and the chemistry that led to life were inextricably interwoven. Earth scientists and prebiotic chemists are working together in new ways to understand how life first emerged.
Posted inNews
“Sticky” Ice Sheets May Have Led to More Intense Glacial Cycles
New research attributes a shift to longer, stronger glacial cycles to increased friction between ice sheets and bedrock in the Northern Hemisphere 1 million years ago.
Posted inNews
Ancient Eruptions Reveal Earliest Settlers on the Faroe Islands
Lake sediment is helping scientists resolve a decades-long historical mystery.
Posted inNews
Ancient Fish Thrived During a Period of Rapid Global Warming
Teeth and scales preserved in marine sediments suggest that fish thrived during one of Earth’s fastest-warming periods.
Posted inNews
The “Green Sahara” Left Behind Fossil Rivers
Reconstruction reveals how people living along the banks of the Nile may have relocated as climate changed and flooding increased during the African Humid Period.
Posted inNews
Inland Mangroves Are Relics of the Past’s Higher Sea Levels
Mangroves found in southern Mexico’s rain forest, 170 kilometers from the nearest ocean, date to a time when sea levels were several meters higher.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
A Dipole Field from the Ediacaran-Cambrian Transition Onward?
The Ediacaran features an instable magnetic field complicating paleogeographic reconstructions; a new paleointensity study on late Ediacaran rocks indicates a weak but stable dipolar field.