Imagine being an extraterrestrial geologist in geostationary orbit above the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. You’re the first explorers to reach Earth (underpants-thieving aliens aside), and you haven’t got a lot of data on this little blue marble
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Feed SubscriptionFirst of Our Kind: Could Australopithecus sediba Be Our Long Lost Ancestor? (preview)
Sometime between three million and two million years ago, perhaps on a primeval sa
Read More »First of Our Kind: Could Australopithecus sediba Be Our Long Lost Ancestor? (preview)
Sometime between three million and two million years ago, perhaps on a primeval sa
Read More »First of Our Kind: Could Australopithecus sediba Be Our Long Lost Ancestor? (preview)
Sometime between three million and two million years ago, perhaps on a primeval sa
Read More »Temperatures–Not Acid–Could Cook Coral to Death
One of the biggest natural tragedies of recent years is the deterioration of Australia's Great Barrier Reef , a vast structure of coral off the continent's east coast that supports a profusion of wildlife. In addition to overfishing and nutrient pollution, the world's largest natural structure has suffered from rising ocean temperatures. But, perhaps less well known, Australia's west coast has some massive reefs of its own, offshore in the southeastern Indian Ocean.
Read More »Temperatures–Not Acid–Could Cook Coral to Death
One of the biggest natural tragedies of recent years is the deterioration of Australia's Great Barrier Reef , a vast structure of coral off the continent's east coast that supports a profusion of wildlife.
Read More »Is Money Wasted Preparing for a Major Midwest Quake?
The lethal fault cuts through the middle of a Tennessee bean field and then ducks beneath the Mississippi River, making a beeline for New Madrid , Missouri. Named the Reelfoot fault, this geological crack combined with neighbouring faults two centuries ago to unleash a series of devastating earthquakes that have been called the biggest to strike the contiguous United States in recorded history.
Read More »Robins Found Guilty in West Nile Virus Spread
West Nile virus first appeared in North America in 1999. And it quickly moved across the continent.
Read More »African land grab threatens food security: study
By Christine Stebbins CHICAGO (Reuters) - Rich countries grabbing farmland in Africa to feed their growing populations can leave rural populations there without land or jobs and make the continent's hunger problem more severe, an environmental think tank said on Tuesday. [More]
Read More »A Carbon Tax to Fly to Paris? U.S.-Europe Showdown on Airline Emissions Begins
If European lawmakers have their way, by next year any American flying from Boston to Paris will have to pay for the plane's carbon emissions over Massachusetts, Nova Scotia, the Atlantic Ocean and France.
Read More »Smoking Weeds: Stopping Fast-Spreading, Invasive Reeds without Chemicals Takes Perseverance
Dear EarthTalk : We have an invasion of phragmites in the wetlands bordering our neighborhood. I understand they are a non-native plant that, if left unchecked, will overrun the whole ecosystem. How does one remedy this situation in an eco-friendly way?
Read More »Coming Soon: A Massive Wind Farm to Power Kenya
There are some 700 million people in Africa without access to electricity. As the continent modernizes, those people will need power.
Read More »Antarctic Ice Can Grow from the Bottom
A new study suggests some of Antarctica's ice sheet grows from the bottom up, adding a new wrinkle to efforts to predict how the continent's glaciers will respond to climate change. Radar images show that water under the base of the ice sheet refreezes into ice, creating a new bottom layer that accounts for up to half the total thickness of the ice sheet in some locations
Read More »Bison versus Mammoths: New Culprit in the Disappearance of North America’s Giants
Bear-size beavers, mammoths, horses, camels and saber-toothed cats used to roam North America, but by 11,000 years ago most such large mammals had died off. To this day, experts debate what caused this late Pleistocene extinction: climate change, overhunting by humans, disease--or something else? Eric Scott, curator of paleontology at the San Bernardino County Museum in Redlands, Calif., suggests it was something else: namely, the immigration of bison from Eurasia
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