Rocks formed immediately before and after non-avian dinosaurs went extinct are strikingly different, and now, tens of millions of years later, scientists think they’ve identified the culprit—and it wasn’t the Chicxulub asteroid impact. In a study published Monday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers argue that dinosaurs physically influenced their surroundings so dramatically […]
Around 90% of an Earthquake’s Energy Doesn’t Do What You Think It Does
Earthquakes can be deadly and disastrous. But what we feel may constitute a tiny sliver of an earthquake’s destructive energy, according to a new experiment. In a recent AGU Advances paper, researchers describe how they created “lab quakes,” or miniature versions of natural earthquakes created in a controlled laboratory. Doing so allowed the team to […]
Meteorite Crashes Into Georgia Home, Turns Out to Be 20 Million Years Older Than Earth
On a clear June day in Georgia, a blazing fireball suddenly fell out of the sky over the Atlanta metro area. The source of this spectacle was a 1-ton meteor that exploded in mid-air, sending a cherry tomato-sized fragment shooting through the roof of a McDonough home. Though no one knew it then, this space […]
Ancient Rocks in Canada Are Almost as Old as the Earth Itself
Due to the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates, our planet’s crust is constantly recycled, making rocks and minerals from its earliest days incredibly rare. That’s frustrating for geologists, since surface-level Hadean rocks (rocks older than 4.03 billion years) could provide significant insight into the first geological stages of Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history. In a study published […]
How Did This 1,300-Ton Boulder Travel Up a Cliff? Scientists Just Figured It Out
A giant boulder in Tonga rode a wave from an ancient tsunami 7,000 years ago. The 1,300-ton rock traveled a distance twice the size of a football field, swept away by the sheer force of the wave, according to a new study. But this was no ordinary giant rock. It was also sitting on a […]
New Evidence Bolsters Theory of Megaflood That Refilled the Mediterranean Millions of Years Ago
Millions of years ago, the Mediterranean Sea evaporated. It may have then been refilled by the largest flooding event ever experienced on Earth. An international team of researchers has uncovered new evidence supporting the Zanclean megaflood, a theorized event that refilled the Mediterranean Sea after the Messinian Salinity Crisis had transformed it into a dry, […]