By Tim Radford For the entire 2.5 million years of the Ice Age epoch called the Pleistocene, it was a low-carbon world. Atmospheric carbon dioxide hovered around 230 parts per million. Not only did Homo sapiens evolve on a low-carbon planet, so did Homo erectus and most other human species now known only from fossil […]
By Lauren Sommer When California’s historic five-year drought finally relented a few years ago, the tally of dead trees in the Sierra Nevada was higher than almost anyone expected: 129 million. Most are still standing, the dry patches dotting the mountainsides. But some trees did survive the test of heat and drought. Now, scientists are […]
There is so much biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest that scientists identify a new plant or animal species there on average every other day. Their latest discovery is particularly shocking. What scientists thought was one species of electric eel is actually three, and one of the newly identified species can deliver the strongest electric shock […]
Some two billion years ago, a significant decline of once-abundant oxygen killed as much as 99 percent of all life on Earth in a mass extinction event larger than the one responsible for the dinosaur die-off. Publishing their work in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers describe the catalyst of […]
By Ben Marwick, Erle C. Ellis, Lucas Stephens, Nicole Boivin Examples of how human societies are changing the planet abound — from building roads and houses, clearing forests for agriculture and digging train tunnels, to shrinking the ozone layer, driving species extinct, changing the climate and acidifying the oceans. Human impacts are everywhere. Our societies […]
Summers in Europe are much hotter than they used to be and winters aren’t nearly as cold as they once were. And, the continent is warming much faster than climate models had once projected. That is the disturbing takeaway from a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. This summer saw two unbearable […]
By Malavika Vyawahare Think of a reptile that’s been genetically mutated, and Godzilla springs to mind. Or maybe ninja turtles. But the real thing is here, and it’s neither hell-bent on destroying Tokyo nor eating pizza in the sewers. Instead, it’s a pale, finger-sized lizard — the world’s first gene-edited reptile, researchers at the University […]
The rallying cry to build it again and to build it better than before is inspiring after a natural disaster, but it may not be the best course of action, according to new research published in the journal Science. “Faced with global warming, rising sea levels, and the climate-related extremes they intensify, the question is […]
Hope may be on the horizon for the world’s depleted coral reefs thanks to scientists who successfully reproduced endangered corals in a laboratory setting for the first time, according to Reuters. The majestic beauty of the biodiversity in ocean’s coral reefs is under threat from the climate crisis. Viruses and bacteria that are hostile to […]
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