Pollen from sediment cores shows that a now dry channel cutting through Giza was once a flowing waterway that Egyptian pyramid builders could have used to transport supplies.
paleoclimatology & paleoceanography
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Glacier Advance and Retreat: Insights From the Top of the World
New dating of glacial features reveals predictable glacier behavior in response to climate warming and cooling in the Everest region in the past 8,000 years.
Posted inScience Updates
A Post-Impact Deep Freeze for Dinosaurs
New research supports the hypothesis that dinosaurs were done in by climate change after an asteroid impact kicked up a massive plume of sulfur gases that circled the globe for several decades.
Posted inNews
Volcanic Winters Ushered in the Jurassic Reign of the Dinosaurs
Sediment cores from northwestern China reveal freezing conditions during the Late Triassic killed off many forms of life—but not dinosaurs.
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 inEditors' Highlights
New Tool to Decipher Past Upper Troposphere Temperatures
Small variations in clumped O2 isotopes reflect temperatures in the upper troposphere. Bubbles measured in polar ice cores show the global lapse-rate appears to steepen during the Last Glacial Maximum.
Posted inNews
Martian Glaciers May Have Carved Its Valleys
Networks of valleys provide puzzling hints of running water on the surface of the Red Planet. New research suggests that some tributaries could have formed from icy sheets thousands of meters thick.
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
Stretching Crust Explains Earth’s 170,000-Year-Long Heat Wave
During a brief period in Earth’s past, a massive emission of carbon abruptly raised global temperatures, acidified oceans, and stamped out species. New data may help explain how it happened.
Posted inNews
Satellite Images Reveal a New View of Ancient Earth’s Rivers
A new method shows a key relationship between the width and makeup of Earth’s river channels over time. The technique could be applied to other terrestrial bodies, such as Mars.