Using a new laboratory technique to analyze fossil snail shells, scientists have gained insights into an abrupt climate shift that transformed the planet nearly 34 million years ago.
Earth Sciences
Apr 22, 2013
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(Phys.org)—NASA's car-sized rover, Curiosity, has taken significant steps toward understanding how Mars may have lost much of its original atmosphere.
Space Exploration
Nov 2, 2012
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Most researchers imagine the initial oxygenation of the ocean and atmosphere to have been something like a staircase, but with steps only going up. The first step, so the story goes, occurred around 2.4 billion years ago, ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 23, 2012
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White sharks, the largest predatory sharks in the ocean, are thought of as apex predators that feed primarily on seals and sea lions. But a new study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows surprising ...
Plants & Animals
Sep 28, 2012
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(Phys.org) -- When delving into the nuances of carbon dioxide, a new instrument designed by scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory "sips" the sample and reveals information about the source of the different carbon ...
Analytical Chemistry
Apr 9, 2012
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New assessments by researchers using the latest high-tech tools to study the diets of early hominids are challenging long-held assumptions about what our ancestors ate, says a study by the University of Colorado Boulder and ...
Archaeology
Oct 13, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Micha Ruhl and colleagues from the University of Copenhagen's Nordic Center for Earth Evolution have published a paper in Science where they contend that the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the ...
Where Atlantic salmon feed in the ocean has been a long-standing mystery, but new research led by the University of Southampton shows that marine location can be recovered from the chemistry of fish scales. Surprisingly, ...
Ecology
Jun 23, 2011
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Beginning around 542 million years ago, a profusion of animals with shells and skeletons began to appear in the fossil record. So many life forms appeared during this time that it is often referred to as the "Cambrian Explosion."
Earth Sciences
Nov 10, 2010
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Contradictions and puzzles surround the giant fossil Prototaxites. The fossils resemble tree trunks, and yet they are from a time before trees existed. The stable carbon isotope values are similar to those of fungi, but the ...
Archaeology
Feb 10, 2010
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