Lost world gives glimpse of planet before last Ice Age
A lost world in Mexico has offered scientists a glimpse of the planet before the last Ice Age.
Researchers determine what caused the Liangzhu Culture collapse
The Liangzhu Culture, referred to as "China's Venice of the Stone Age" was the last Neolithic jade culture in the Yangtze River Delta of China.
“Volcanic winter” likely contributed to ecological catastrophe 250 million years ago
A team of scientists has identified an additional force that likely contributed to a mass extinction event 250 million years ago.
By 2500 earth could be alien to humans
To fully grasp and plan for climate impacts under any scenario, researchers and policymakers must look well beyond the 2100 benchmark.
Prehistoric climate change repeatedly channelled human migrations across Arabia
New research shows that over the last 400,000 years, multiple pulses of increased rainfall transformed the generally arid Arabian Peninsula into a hospitable route for human population movements across Southwest Asia.
Using archaeology to better understand climate change
Throughout history, people of different cultures and stages of evolution have found ways to adapt, with varying success, to the gradual warming of the environment they live in. But can the past inform the future, now that climate change is happening faster than ever before?
Global climate dynamics drove the decline of mastodonts and elephants
Elephants and their forebears were pushed into wipeout by waves of extreme global environmental change, rather than overhunting by early humans, according to new research.
Fecal records show Maya population affected by climate change
A McGill-led study has shown that the size of the Maya population in the lowland city of Itzan (in present-day Guatemala) varied over time in response to climate change.
Climate conditions during the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa reconstructed
An international research team led by Professor Dr Frank Schäbitz has published a climate reconstruction of the last 200,000 years for Ethiopia.
Newly discovered African ‘climate seesaw’ drove human evolution
While it is widely accepted that climate change drove the evolution of our species in Africa, the exact character of that climate change and its impacts are not well understood.
Biodiversity devastation: Human-driven decline requires millions of years of recovery
A new study shows that the current rate of biodiversity decline in freshwater ecosystems outcompetes that at the end-Cretaceous extinction that killed the dinosaurs: damage now being done in decades to centuries may take millions of years to undo.
The ‘Great Dying’
The Paleozoic era culminated 251.9 million years ago in the most severe mass extinction recorded in the geologic record.
Did Earth’s early rise in oxygen help multicellular life evolve?
Scientists have long thought that there was a direct connection between the rise in atmospheric oxygen, which started with the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 billion years ago, and the rise of large, complex multicellular organisms.
Climate crises in Mesopotamia prompted the first stable forms of State
During the Bronze Age, Mesopotamia was witness to several climate crises. In the long run, these crises prompted the development of stable forms of State and therefore elicited cooperation between political elites and non-elites.
Human land use wasn’t always at nature’s expense
Nearly three-quarters of Earth's land had been transformed by humans by 10,000 BC, but new research shows it largely wasn't at the expense of the natural world.
