A planet’s magnetic field usually protects its atmosphere from being blown away by its star. But new research suggests Mars’s weak magnetic field may have helped its atmosphere escape.
paleoclimatology & paleoceanography
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Armageddon at 10,000 BCE
Fragments of a comet likely hit Earth 12,800 years ago, and a little Paleolithic village in Syria might have suffered the impact.
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Past Seasons Hidden Underground
Belgian paleoclimatologists study a fast-growing stalagmite to glean insight into seasonal climate from centuries past.
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The Overlooked Role of Sulfur Dioxide Emissions from Volcanoes
Volcanoes can warm as much as they cool. Prior simulations have neglected the important warming effects of sulfur dioxide emissions, making some results colder than they should be.
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New England Forests Were Historically Shaped by Climate, Not People
A first-of-its-kind study combining paleoecology and archeology indicates that the New England landscape was not actively managed with fire prior to European arrival.
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Sediments May Support the Mediterranean Megaflood Hypothesis
Millions of years ago, the Mediterranean Sea may have evaporated. A newly identified body of sediments could have been deposited by the giant flood that refilled the basin.
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Dust in the Atmosphere May Have Fertilized the Ancient Ocean
New research investigates dust’s role in primary production during the Carboniferous and Permian periods.
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An Ice Sheet’s Footprint on Ancient Shorelines
Researchers combine observations of ancient shorelines and properties of Earth’s crust to infer the size of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last glacial cycle.
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Megadrought Helped Topple the Assyrian Empire
Paleoclimate records shed light on the ancient civilization’s meteoric rise and catastrophic collapse.
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What Lies Beneath Is Important for Ice Sheets
New research reconstructing the topography of Antarctica shows that the continent has 25% less land above sea level than when ice first started to accumulate 34 million years ago.