As recently as 5,000 years ago, the Sahara—today a vast desert in northern Africa, spanning more than 3.5 million square miles—was a verdant landscape, with sprawling vegetation and numerous lakes. Ancient cave paintings ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 5, 2013
171
0
The ancient North American city of Cahokia had as its focal point a feature now known as Monks Mound, a giant earthwork surrounded on its north, south, east and west by large rectangular open areas. These flat zones, called ...
Archaeology
Jul 21, 2022
0
307
Imagine not a white, but a green Arctic, with woody shrubs as far north as the Canadian coast of the Arctic Ocean. This is what the northernmost region of North America looked like about 125,000 years ago, during the last ...
Earth Sciences
Mar 17, 2021
99
1728
Mass extinctions are rapid global decreases in Earth's biodiversity, with five key events identified over the planet's history, arguably the most famous of which occurred ~66 million years ago during the Cretaceous, which ...
NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and since then has roamed Gale Crater taking samples and sending the results back home for researchers to interpret. Analysis of carbon isotopes in sediment samples taken ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 17, 2022
8
793
It was climate that killed many of the large mammals after the latest Ice Age. But what more specifically was it with the climate that led to this mass extinction? The answer to this is hidden in a large number of sediment ...
Earth Sciences
Feb 5, 2014
19
1
New research suggests that climate change following massive volcanic eruptions drove Neanderthals to extinction and cleared the way for modern humans to thrive in Europe and Asia.
Archaeology
Sep 30, 2010
6
0
The Tibetan Plateau in China experiences the strongest monsoon system on Earth, with powerful winds—and accompanying intense rains in the summer months—caused by a complex system of global air circulation patterns and ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 6, 2017
2
298
A natural substance obtained from seeds of the "miracle tree" could purify and clarify water inexpensively and sustainably in the developing world, where more than 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water, scientists ...
Biochemistry
Jan 18, 2012
5
1
Lush greenery rich in Douglas fir and hemlock trees covers the Triangle Lake valley of the Oregon Coast Range. Today, however, geologists across the country are more focused on sediment samples dating back 50,000 years that ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 27, 2015
0
498
