1+ week, 4+ day ago  (687+ words) Space junk returning to the Earth is introducing metal pollution to the pristine upper atmosphere as it burns up on re-entry, a new study has found. Published today in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, the study was led by Robin…...

1+ week, 5+ day ago  (437+ words) Once, long ago, a little reptile going about its business plopped itself down in the mud before getting up and carrying on with its day. Nearly 300 million years later, that brief rest has yielded the world's earliest known fossilized imprint…...

1+ week, 6+ day ago  (517+ words) Some dinosaurs were scaly, some were covered in bony plates of armor, and others were even feathered. But now paleontologists have discovered a new species with a type of skin covering that's never been seen in dinosaurs before: hollow spikes....

2+ week, 8+ hour ago  (763+ words) Deep inside the Greenland ice sheet, radar images have revealed strange, plume-like structures distorting the layering deposited over eons. Now, more than a decade after their discovery, scientists think they have figured out what causes these structures, and it's a…...

2+ week, 12+ hour ago  (664+ words) Researchers have identified a period of sluggish magnetic field flipping for planet Earth, some 40 million years ago " raising big questions about how long these reversals actually take, and how we might be affected by the next one. Magnetic field flips…...

2+ week, 1+ day ago  (279+ words) A new Spinosaurus species has been unearthed from the Saharan desert, and its skull bears a magnificent crest never seen before on this kind of dinosaur. The discovery reveals more than just the dinosaur's beauty, however. Spinosaurus have mostly been…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago  (736+ words) Although Earth is approximately spherical, its gravity field doesn't adhere to the same geometry. In visualizations, it more closely resembles a potato, with bumps and divots. One of the strongest of these depressions " where the gravity field is weaker " lies…...

3+ week, 2+ day ago  (380+ words) Geologists have mapped a strange magnetic anomaly in Australia " and in a stunning coincidence, it happens to look remarkably like the continent it lurks beneath. The anomaly seems to feature its own version of Queensland's point in the north, reaches…...

3+ week, 3+ day ago  (629+ words) From the outside, Earth doesn't seem to have a lot going on in the hydrogen department" but that doesn't mean it's completely lacking in the most abundant element in the Universe. Bound to oxygen, it sits in plain sight as…...

3+ week, 3+ day ago  (587+ words) Meet Tyrannoroter heberti, a newly described species that was one of the largest, most feared land animals of its time " at least, if you were a fern. Hailing from 307 million years ago, this strange tetrapod was among the earliest known…...