News
Pterosaur fossil reveals new clues about what flying reptiles ate
1+ week, 1+ hour ago (806+ words) A fossilized wing bone from a flying reptile that died 113 million years ago has been preserved in extraordinary condition. The bone retained its three-dimensional structure and even contains chemical traces that offer clues about what the animal ate. The secret…...
Why thousands of underwater mountains don't fit the Hawaii volcano story
6+ day, 21+ hour ago (898+ words) The Hawaiian Islands chain tells a clean story. A tectonic plate drifts slowly over a fixed hot spot buried in the mantle, and volcanoes punch through in sequence, oldest farthest from the source. That model has held for decades " and…...
452-million-year-old fossil kept soft tissue that should have vanished
1+ week, 1+ day ago (780+ words) Fossils are usually the hard leftovers of a life. A bone, a tooth, the chalky shell of a creature that once sat on an ancient seabed. Crinoid tube feet are nothing like that. They are soft, water-filled stalks, the kind…...
Mountain soils store twice as much carbon as scientists thought
1+ week, 4+ day ago (726+ words) Hilly and mountainous landscapes store significantly more carbon in their soil than scientists had previously estimated " roughly twice as much as existing global models predicted." The finding flips a long-standing assumption: that rapidly eroding terrain would have thin, carbon-poor soils....
USGS unveils a new geologic map
1+ week, 5+ day ago (865+ words) When the U. S. Geological Survey released its new interactive national geologic map, it closed a chapter that began more than two centuries ago. The story of mapping the rock beneath an entire continent stretches back to a single Scottish immigrant working…...
A hidden pollutant is changing how the world's forests breathe carbon
2+ week, 1+ day ago (834+ words) A hidden pollutant is changing how the world's forests release carbon " and for decades, scientists could not agree on how. New research drawing on 168 forest experiments has now resolved that standoff. Whether nitrogen causes forest soils to release more or…...
Scientists found a rock clue that may explain how Earth's oceans changed before animals rose
2+ week, 2+ day ago (810+ words) Building a shell or skeleton takes chemistry. The first animals to grow shells and skeletons needed an ocean loaded with specific minerals, but the forces that shaped ancient ocean chemistry and supplied those minerals have long been an open question....
Frozen squirrel droppings reveal lost Ice Age ecosystems
2+ week, 3+ day ago (863+ words) Deep in the permafrost of Canada's Yukon, ancient ground squirrels left behind something far more valuable than bones. Their droppings, sealed in frozen burrows for hundreds of thousands of years, have turned out to be one of the richest genetic…...
Mystery behind violent volcano eruptions may finally be solved
2+ week, 2+ day ago (842+ words) Spectacular jets of glowing rock soared into the sky above the Canary Islands for nearly three months in late 2021, burying farms and homes under fresh basalt. Some basaltic volcanoes just dribble out and ooze downhill instead. The chemistry of the…...
Scientists have finally identified the New Mexico reptile that had puzzled paleontologists for decades
2+ week, 3+ day ago (658+ words) Picture a crocodile. Now erase the teeth. Stand it upright on two legs. Shrink the arms down to almost nothing. What you have left looks less like anything lurking in a Florida swamp and more like an ostrich with scales....