New research introduces a paleoenvironmental model in which tidal dynamics influenced the earliest development of agriculture and sociopolitical complexity...
Textbooks often portray primates as originating, evolving, and dispersing exclusively within warm tropical forests. This tends to come from fossil evidence...
During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of geological rapid warming and aridification approximately 56 million years ago, a flesh-eating...
During periods known as Snowball Earth, between 720 and 635 million years ago, early eukaryotes — complex cellular lifeforms that eventually evolved...
In new research, paleontologists combined data on the distribution of Triassic pterosauromorph (pterosaur + lagerpetid) fossils with information on the...
Today, there are only two sloth species, but historically, there were dozens of them, including one with a bottle-nosed snout that ate ants and another...
The genus Tyrannosaurus most likely arose in North America, although its direct ancestors migrated over from Asia more than 70 million years ago, according...
Observations of large valley networks on today’s Mars suggest formation by flowing water. However, most climate models cannot sustain temperatures above...
The Saharo-Arabian Desert is one of the largest biogeographical barriers on Earth, impeding dispersals between Africa and Eurasia, including movements...
Called ferrihydrite, this iron mineral formed during a cold, wet period on early Mars under oxidative conditions, followed by a transition to the current...
As our Solar System orbits the Milky Way, it encounters various environments, including dense regions of the interstellar medium. These encounters can...
Using data gathered by China’s Zhurong rover, planetary researchers have identified hidden layers of rock under the Martian surface that strongly suggest...
Homo erectus, an early member of the genus Homo, successfully navigated harsher and more arid terrains for longer in Eastern Africa than previously thought,...
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, which is characterized by irregular alternations between anomalously warm (El Niño) and cold (La Niña) conditions,...
Carbonate minerals are of particular interest in paleoenvironmental research as they are an integral part of the carbon and water cycles, both of which...
Breakup of an asteroid passing within Earth’s Roche limit likely formed the debris ring during the middle Ordovician period, according to new research...
The end-Permian mass extinction, which occurred about 252 million years ago, was the most severe extinction event in the past 540 million years, eliminating...
Using a large assemblage of human fossils from Ice Age Europe, paleoanthropologists have identified a population turnover in Western Europe at 28,000 years...
