The planet's largest carbon reservoir is not in permafrost or the Amazon rainforest, it is hidden in the Earth's inner core, according to what the authors of a new study in PNAS call a "…

An ancient, deep canyon buried along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in south Tibet, north of the eastern end of the Himalayas, has been discovered by geologists who say this ancient canyon--thousands of…

Time is relative. What is a long time to humans is nothing to a mountain. Like humans, mountains usually burst on the scene, then they stand tall and finally age wears them down and their sharp …

Tectonic plates, which make up the outer layer of the earth, are rigid. It is giant layers of rock, after all. But that is a bit of a simplification. They are not rigid and don't fit together as…

The "Cambrian explosion," the rapid diversification of animal life in the fossil record 530 million years ago, has by necessity remained the subjective of speculation. We know it happened, but no…

By Simon Redfern, University of Cambridge How is it that Earth developed an atmosphere that made the development of life possible? A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience links the origins…

 Massive amounts of erupting lava have connected with the fall of civilizations, the destruction of supercontinents and dramatic changes in climate and ecosystems.  Since August 31st,…

How many continents can you count on one hand? Image: Chones By Nick Rawlinson, University of Aberdeen From the 1950s until recently, we thought we had a clear idea of how continents form. Most…

Since December 2004 there have been 18 quakes of 8.0 or greater on the moment magnitude (Mw) scale – a rate more than twice that seen from 1900 to mid-2004. Some of that difference could be due…

A study of Samoan volcano hotspots has found evidence of the planet's early formation still trapped inside the Earth. Volcanic island chains such as Samoa can contain ancient primordial…