Natural History

Modern proteins exhibit an impressive degree of structural diversity, which has been well characterized, but very little is known about how and when over the course of evolution 3D protein structures arose.

Climate changes how species interact with one another—and not just today. Scientists are studying trends from fossil records to understand how climate change impacted the world in the ancient past and to identify ways to predict how things may change in the future, according to a new study by University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science researcher Matt Fitzpatrick and colleagues published in the August 2 issue of Science.

Year-round ice-free conditions across the surface of the Arctic Ocean could explain why the Earth was substantially warmer during the Pliocene Epoch than it is today, despite similar concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to new research carried out at the University of Colorado Boulder.

It is nothing short of a world record in DNA research that scientists at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark (University of Copenhagen) have hit.

The disappearance of large, fruit-eating birds from tropical forests in Brazil has caused the region's forest palms to produce smaller, less successful seeds over the past century, researchers say.

Scientists have long believed that lava erupted from certain oceanic volcanoes contains materials from the early Earth's crust. But decisive evidence for this phenomenon has proven elusive. New research from a team including Carnegie's Erik Hauri demonstrates that oceanic volcanic rocks contain samples of recycled crust dating back to the Archean era 2.5 billion years ago. Their work is published in Nature.

A new look at conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into a region of Mexico in the dinosaur days indicates the event could have triggered a global firestorm that would have burned every twig, bush and tree on Earth and led to the extinction of 80 percent of all Earth's species, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

Rutile is used in ceramics and paints, but is particularly useful for finding out about the history of a rock.

The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration.

Butterflies are among the most vibrant insects, with colorations sometimes designed to deflect predators. New University of Florida research shows some of these defenses may be driven by enemies one-tenth their size.

With data from 73 ice and sediment core monitoring sites around the world, scientists have reconstructed Earth's temperature history back to the end of the last Ice Age.

Antarctica's topography began changing from flat to fjord-filled starting about 34 million years ago, according to a new report from a University of Arizona-led team of geoscientists.

A new model suggests that inhospitable hydrodgen-sulphide rich waters could have delayed the spread of complex life forms in ancient oceans.

Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could see permanently frozen ground thaw over a large area of Siberia, threatening release of carbon from soils, and damage to natural and human environments.

A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder looking for clues about why Earth did not warm as much as scientists expected between 2000 and 2010 now thinks the culprits are hiding in plain sight -- dozens of volcanoes spewing sulfur dioxide.