Etched onto the steep walls of Arizona's 6,000-foot-deep, 277-mile-long Grand Canyon are clues that chronicle the sweeping changes the region has experienced during the past two billion years. The canyon's colorful layers narrate tales of ancient environments come and gone, from lofty mountain ranges and tropical seas to a Saharan-scale desert that once stretched across much of western North America.
Read moreAnthropologist contributed a large, multi-institutional study explaining how the human-influenced mass extinction of giant carnivores and herbivores of North America fundamentally changed the biodiversity and landscape of the continent.
Read moreMany people are familiar with the existence of Neanderthals, the humanoid species that was a precursor to modern humans, but far less is known Denisovans, a similar group that were contemporaries to the Neanderthals and who died out approximately 50,000 years ago. Researchers have now made a reconstruction of a Denisovan girl based on patterns of methylation (chemical changes) in their ancient DNA.
Read moreSince they first arrived on land, plants have likely been using the same genetic tools to regulate whether they grow bigger or reproduce. The discovery was made using liverwort, one descendant of the first plants to move out of the ancient oceans and onto land.
Read moreThe rate at which the planet warms in response to the ongoing buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas could increase in the future, according to new simulations of a comparable warm period more than 50 million years ago.
Read moreAbout 466 million years ago, long before the age of the dinosaurs, the Earth froze. The seas began to ice over at the Earth's poles, and new species evolved with the new temperatures. The cause of this ice age was a mystery, until now: a new study argues that the ice age was caused by global cooling, triggered by extra dust in the atmosphere from a giant asteroid collision in outer space.
Read moreDuring the late 10th century BCE, the emerging Edomite Kingdom of the southern Levant experienced a 'leap' in technological advancement.
Read moreThe ancestor of some of the largest flying birds ever has been found in Waipara, New Zealand.
Read moreUsing DNA from museum specimens collected in the early 20th century, researchers identified two new species of giant salamander — one of which they suspect is the world's biggest amphibian.
Read morePalorchestid marsupials, an extinct group of Australian megafauna, had strange bodies and lifestyles unlike any living species.
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