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 ...

Curtin researchers believe that ancient supercontinents formed and then fell apart through alternating cycles spanning hundreds of millions of years that involved superoceans being swallowed and the ...

Ultimately, to understand how the Earth’s carbon cycle works is to appreciate the human influence currently impacting it. Getty Images, James Cawley This is the second in a five-part series written by ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

I was actually sent a review copy of this well in advance of its late-April publication, but because I’m a terrible person (and, you know, have a day job that involved a lot of intensive work during a ...

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 ...