In the whole history of Earth's climate, few events are as extreme as those that geologists call "Snowball Earth." "These are times when geologic evidence indicates Earth froze over, essentially from ...

Life made the modern Earth as much as the Earth made life, a new book by a philosopher of consciousness argues. That dynamic leaves humans with a unique set of moral questions, Peter Godfrey-Smith of ...

We live on a wild planet, a wobbly, erupting, ocean-sloshed orb that careens around a giant thermonuclear explosion in the void. Big rocks whiz by overhead, and here on the Earth’s surface, whole ...

Ancient rocks in Australia suggest Earth’s tectonic plates were already moving 3.5 billion years ago, reshaping understanding ...

All organisms are made of living cells. While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when the first cells came to exist, geologists' best estimates suggest at least as early as 3.8 billion years ago. But ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: In geological layers around the world (particularly in the southwestern U.S.) roughly one billion years of rock are missing—a mystery known as the ...

Learn about how Earth’s history is written in its rocks with this excerpt from “How to Read a Rock” Jan Zalasiewicz The pine tree, in this age-old relationship, is supported by the rock, and gains ...

Over four millennia ago, in the final days of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, a drought swept over the region, afflicting lands as far away as Greece and what’s now Pakistan. Probably driven by ...

In a geological period 469 million years ago known as the Ordovicium Period, Earth's seas were inhabited by animals like trilobites (reminiscent of pillbugs), conodonts (eel-like vertebrates) and ...

Early Eocene forest, Wyoming, U.S. Illustration by Julius Csotonyi, Smithsonian Institution Pollinators play a vital role in fertilising flowers, which grow into seeds and fruits and underpin our ...