2+ hour, 54+ min ago   (30+ words) NASA’s Curiosity rover has stumbled on the largest patch of polygon-shaped ground fractures it has ever seen on Mars, a discovery that could reveal more about the planet’s watery past....

6+ day, 23+ hour ago   (118+ words) The Chicxulub impact not only plunged Earth into an impact winter but also produced a dust blanket that later overheated the planet, according to new research from Purdue University and the University of Colorado, Boulder....

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (49+ words) By analyzing nickel isotopes preserved in the 66-million-year-old debris left by the Chicxulub impact, researchers conclude that the asteroid responsible for Earth’s last mass extinction most likely belonged to an exceptionally rare class of primitive meteorites called carbonaceous chondrites of…...

1+ mon, 3+ week ago   (667+ words) Fossils from some of the oldest-known animals on Earth, dating from 574 million years ago (Ediacaran period), suggest that cloning, not competition, dominated the Ediacaran seas, slowing evolution until environmental stress helped drive the rise of sexual reproduction and a burst…...

2+ mon, 1+ week ago   (146+ words) Analyzing 1.75-billion-year-old microfossils from ancient Australian seabeds, paleontologists say ancient eukaryotes -- the ancestors of every plant, animal and fungus -- huddled in oxygenated seafloor patches for over a billion years before breaking free into open water....

2+ mon, 3+ week ago   (293+ words) “Global glaciations near the dawn of animal life — the so-called Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth events — are among the most extreme climatic perturbations in Earth’s history and likely exerted a strong influence on biological evolution,” said Harvard University graduate student Charlotte Minsky…...

2+ mon, 3+ week ago   (676+ words) Unusual gases rising from geothermal springs within the Kafue Rift of Zambia suggest a deep fracture in Earth’s crust could mark the early stages of a new tectonic boundary. Location map of the extensional zone within the Central African Plateau…...

2+ mon, 4+ week ago   (195+ words) A new hypothesis proposes that the Cambrian Explosion -- the sudden burst of animal diversity 500 million years ago -- was not driven by shells or limbs, but by the early evolution of complex nervous systems....

3+ mon, 1+ week ago   (625+ words) If you’ve ever wondered how geologists know so much about ancient beaches and shallow oceans — from the paleoenvironment to the animals roaming around, the seasonality of the weather, and even the time of day when the ancient scene was preserved…...

4+ mon, 4+ day ago   (529+ words) New findings from Neretva Vallis, an ancient river channel that once transported water into Jezero crater on Mars, reveal unusually high nickel levels in 3-billion-year-old sediments, echoing mineral patterns on Earth sometimes linked to microbial processes. Nickel is present in…...