Geoscience News

Atmospheric Lead Pollution Caused Widespread Cognitive Decline in Roman-Era Europe, Study Finds

Bronze and silver coins from the 4th century CE found in Lod, central Israel. Image credit: Israel Antiquities Authority.
Jan 7, 2025 by News Staff

Researchers have examined three ice core records to identify lead pollution levels in the Arctic between 500 BCE through 600 CE. Lead isotopes allowed the authors to identify mining and smelting operations throughout Europe as the likely source of pollution during this period. Advanced computer modeling of atmospheric movement then produced maps of atmospheric lead pollution levels across Europe. Combined with research linking lead exposure to cognitive...

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Outcrop area of CAMP rocks in Pangea showing paleolatitudes at CAMP time (201 million years ago) of key localities with the terrestrial end-Triassic extinction including the Newark Basin (NB) in northeastern North America, the Fundy Basin (FB) of Atlantic Canada, and the Central High Atlas (CHA) Basin of Morocco. Image credit: Kent et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2415486121.

New Research Casts More Light on Mechanisms of End-Triassic Mass Extinction

Oct 29, 2024 by News Staff

The end-Triassic extinction along with the end-Permian and end-Cretaceous events are the most severe mass extinctions in the past 270 million years. The...

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, originating in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, is a defining mode of interannual climate variability with profound impact on global climate and ecosystems. Image credit: Li et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2404758121.

El Nino-Southern Oscillation is At Least 250 Million Years Old, New Study Suggests

Oct 24, 2024 by News Staff

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which is characterized by irregular alternations between anomalously warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) conditions,...

NASA’s high-flying ER-2 airplane carries instrumentation in this artist’s impression of the Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s Eye Geostationary Lightning Mapper Simulator and Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (ALOFT) mission to record gamma rays (colored purple for illustration) from thunderclouds. Image credit: NASA / ALOFT team.

Gamma-Ray Emission from Tropical Thunderstorms Takes More Forms Than Previously Thought

Oct 3, 2024 by News Staff

There’s more to thunderclouds than rain and lightning. Along with visible light emissions, thunderclouds can produce intense bursts of gamma rays that...

The center of this infographic shows the sharpest-ever image of the cloud of charged particles trapped in Earth’s magnetic field, while the insets show measurements of high-energy ions and electrons detected along the JUICE’s flyby route. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Johns Hopkins APL / Josh Diaz.

JUICE Captures Sharpest Ever Image of Earth’s Radiation Belt

Oct 2, 2024 by News Staff

In August 2024, ESA’s JUpiter ICy Moons Explorer (JUICE) made history with a daring Moon-Earth flyby and double gravity assist maneuver. As the spacecraft...

Han et al. found that erosion from a river network about 75 km from Mount Everest is carving away a substantial gorge; the loss of this landmass is causing the mountain to spring upwards by as much as 2 mm a year and has already increased its height by between 15 and 50 m over the past 89,000 years. Image credit: Truthseeker08.

Nearby River is Pushing Up Peak of Mount Everest, Study Suggests

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

Mount Everest, also known as Chomolungma in Tibetan or Sagarmāthā in Nepali, is about 15 to 50 m taller than it would otherwise be because of uplift...

A map of the East Pacific Rise region where the discovery of an ancient seafloor was made. Image credit: Jingchuan Wang.

Geoscientists Discover Mysterious Subduction Zone beneath Pacific Ocean

Oct 1, 2024 by News Staff

During the Mesozoic era, between 250 and 120 million years ago, an ancient seafloor sank deep into Earth in the East Pacific Rise, a tectonic plate boundary...

Oceanic anoxic events are geologically abrupt phases of extreme oxygen depletion in the oceans that disrupted marine ecosystems and brought about evolutionary turnover. Typically lasting approximately 1.5 million years, these events occurred frequently during the Mesozoic era, from about 183 to 85 million years ago. One hypothesis suggests that anoxic events resulted from enhanced chemical weathering of Earth’s surface in a greenhouse world shaped by high volcanic carbon outgassing. Gernon et al. tested this hypothesis using a combination of plate reconstructions, tectonic-geochemical analysis and global biogeochemical modeling. Image credit: University of Southampton.

Study: Tag-Team between Oceans and Continents Triggered Mesozoic Extinctions of Marine Life

Sep 4, 2024 by News Staff

In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists offer a new explanation for a string of severe environmental crises, called oceanic anoxic...

Energy dispersive spectroscopic map of the sample studied by Voisey et al. Image credit: Chris Voisey.

Earthquake-Induced Piezoelectricity Plays Key Role in Formation of Large Gold Nuggets: Study

Sep 2, 2024 by News Staff

Gold nuggets occur predominantly in quartz veins, and the current paradigm posits that gold precipitates from hot water and carbon dioxide-rich fluids...

Collinson et al. report the existence of a +0.55 ± 0.09 V electric potential drop between 250 km and 768 km from a planetary electrostatic field generated exclusively by the outward pressure of ionospheric electrons; they experimentally demonstrate that the ambipolar field of Earth controls the structure of the polar ionosphere, boosting the scale height by 271%. Image credit: NASA.

NASA’s Endurance Mission Measures Earth’s Ambipolar Electric Field for First Time

Aug 28, 2024 by News Staff

First hypothesized more than 60 years ago, the ambipolar electric field is a key driver of the polar wind, a steady outflow of charged particles into space...

Air pollution is increasing the severity of summertime thunderstorms. Image credit: ELG21.

Air Pollution Can Increase Severity of Summertime Thunderstorms, Study Says

Aug 20, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Scientists from James Madison University have performed a multi-variable investigation of thunderstorm environments in two distinct geographic regions:...

Hadean Earth. Image credit: Alec Brenner.

New Study Refutes Leading Theory of Continent Formation

Aug 5, 2024 by News Staff

In the new study, Dr. David Hernández Uribe from the University of Illinois Chicago used computer models to study the formation of magmas thought to hold...

Zhu et al. uncovered a nonlinear and boomerang-shape relationship between Saharan dust and tropical cyclone rainfall. Image credit: Enrique.

Study Shows Previously Unknown Link between Saharan Dust Plumes and Tropical Cyclone Rainfall

Jul 25, 2024 by News Staff

According to new research, giant plumes of Saharan dust, transported across the Atlantic Ocean by trade winds, can suppress hurricane formation over the...

A polymetallic nodule, collected from the ocean floor, in a lab at Northwestern University. Image credit: Camille Bridgewater / Northwestern University.

Rare-Earth Metal-Bearing Minerals on Ocean Floor Produce Oxygen, Scientists Say

Jul 22, 2024 by News Staff

Researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science and colleagues have discovered that the polymetallic nodule-covered abyssal seafloor in the...

Wang et al. demonstrate that the inner core of Earth gradually super-rotated from 2003 to 2008, and then from 2008 to 2023 sub-rotated two to three times more slowly back through the same path. Image credit: USC Graphic / Edward Sotelo.

Inner Core of Earth Began to Decrease Its Speed around 2010, Study Suggests

Jun 14, 2024 by News Staff

Movement of the inner core of our planet has been debated by the scientific community for two decades, with some research indicating that the inner core...

Life may have begun shortly after Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago. Image credit: Hadeano.

Great Oxidation Event Lasted At Least 200 Million Years, New Study Reveals

Jun 12, 2024 by News Staff

About 2.5 billion years ago, free oxygen first started to accumulate to meaningful levels in Earth’s atmosphere, setting the stage for the rise of complex...

An artistic conception of the early Earth. Image credit: Simone Marchi / NASA.

Freshwater Appeared on Earth About 4 Billion Years Ago, Study Suggests

Jun 4, 2024 by Natali Anderson

Analyzing 4-billion-year-old zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia’s Mid West region, geoscientists have pushed back the timeline...

The water course of the ancient Ahramat Branch of the Nile. Image credit: Ghoneim et al., doi: 10.1038/s43247-024-01379-7.

Majority of Egyptian Pyramids Was Built along Long-Lost Branch of Nile, Archaeologists Say

May 21, 2024 by News Staff

Archaeologists in Egypt have identified segments of a 64-km-long extinct branch of the river Nile, which they name the Ahramat Branch, running at the foothills...

Collins et al. estimated flow through 3 million river segments, identifying locations around the world marked by intense human water use, including parts of the Colorado, Amazon, Orange, and Murray-Darling river basins, shown as gray here. Image credit: NASA.

New Study Provides Estimates of How Much Water Courses through Earth’s Rivers

Apr 30, 2024 by News Staff

Accurate assessment of global river flows and stores is critical for informing water management practices, but current estimates of global river flows...

Earth’s magnetic field lines. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Earliest Evidence of Earth’s Magnetic Field Found in Greenland

Apr 25, 2024 by News Staff

Recovering ancient records of Earth’s magnetic field is challenging because the magnetization in rocks is often reset by heating during tectonic burial...

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