What exactly triggers the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations that causes the transition from a glacial stage to a warm stage is not fully understood. Scientists have developed a new model in which the weathering of pyrite, a common mineral containing sulfur, plays a key role.
Read moreResearchers have explored how carbon moves between Earth's interior, surface and atmosphere; how much deep carbon exists, in what forms (including vast microbial life); where carbon came from; and how life began.
Read moreThe habits of a needle-toothed tetrapod which lived more than 370 million years ago have filled in a piece of the evolutionary puzzle after an international team of palaeontologists pieced together fossilized skeletons and found unusual characteristics such as a crocodile-like skull with high positioned eyes would have been used to 'keep an eye' on prey before it used its slender needle-like teeth and elastic jaw to snatch its kill and crush it to death.
Read moreFossil coral records provide new evidence that frequent winter shamals, or dust storms, and a prolonged cold winter season contributed to the collapse of the ancient Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.
Read moreSuperbly preserved fossils from Russia cast new and surprising light on one of the earliest tetrapods — the group of animals that made the evolutionary transition from water to land and ultimately became the ancestors not just of amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, but of ourselves.
Read moreNew research on an enzyme that is essential for photosynthesis and all life on earth has uncovered a key finding in its structure which reveals how light can interact with matter to make an essential pigment for life.
Read moreAmazonia is home to the greatest number of species on earth, many now threatened, but a new study hammers home Amazonia's importance, showing that it is not only a place with many species, but one where it has taken an exceptionally long time for new species to form.
Read moreFossil remains of tiny calcareous algae not only provide information about the end of the dinosaurs, but also show how the oceans recovered after the fatal asteroid impact.
Read moreWhile studying sediments in the Bay of Bengal, an international team finds evidence dating back millions of years that catastrophic events likely toppled fresh trees from their mountain homes on a long journey to the deep sea. The discovery may add to models of the Earth's carbon cycle.
Read moreA new study cross-examines classic hypotheses about the coevolution of butterflies with flowering plants and moths with bats, their key predators. The findings show flowering plants did drive much of these insects' diversity, but in a surprise twist, multiple moth lineages evolved 'ears' millions of years before the existence of bats, previously credited with triggering moths' development of hearing organs.
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