Earth Sciences

An integrated approach to geoarchaeology, framing geologic concepts within an archaeological context—"probably the most comprehensive treatise on g...

Drones are revolutionizing ocean conservation. By flying closer and seeing more, drones enhance intimate contact between ocean scientists and activ...

Morgan discusses the origin of the emerald, its peculiar structure, and its strange allure. The story weaves across several continents and thousand...

The field of paleoclimatology relies on physical, chemical, and biological proxies of past climate changes that have been preserved in natural arch...

Kimberley Patton examines the environmental crises facing the world's oceans from the perspective of religious history. Much as the ancient Greeks ...

Mount Vesuvius has been famous ever since its eruption in 79 CE, when it destroyed and buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But less...

In December 2016, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their iconic "Doomsday Clock" thirty seconds forward to two and a half minutes to midnigh...

Covering nearly three-quarters of our planet, the world's oceans are a vast and unique ecosystem from which all life on Earth originated. But each ...

The vertebrate fossil record extends back more than 500 million years, and bonebeds - localized concentrations of the skeletal remains of vertebrat...

Subduction zones, one of the three types of plate boundaries, return Earth's surface to its deep interior. Because subduction zones are gently incl...

At the turn of the nineteenth century, geology - and its claims that the earth had a long and colorful prehuman history - was widely dismissed as d...

Covering nearly three-quarters of our planet, the world's oceans are a vast and unique ecosystem from which all life on Earth originated. But each ...

The Triassic period is generally viewed as the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs. For paleontologists, however, it also marks the rise of the world...

The vertebrate fossil record extends back more than 500 million years, and bonebeds - localized concentrations of the skeletal remains of vertebrat...

Although the species is one of the fundamental units of biological classification, there is remarkably little consensus among biologists about what...

Though we commonly make them the butt of our jokes, weather forecasters are in fact exceptionally good at managing uncertainty. They consistently d...

Nineteenth-century paleontologists boasted that, shown a single bone, they could identify or even reconstruct the extinct creature it came from wit...

The desert has long been a theme in Mark C. Taylor’s work, from his inquiries into the religious significance of Las Vegas to his writings on earth...

Questions of national identity have long dominated China's political, social, and cultural horizons. So in the early 1900s, when diverse groups in ...

As explorers and scientists have known for decades, the Neotropics harbor a fantastic array of our planet's mammalian diversity, from capybaras and...

Though we commonly make them the butt of our jokes, weather forecasters are in fact exceptionally good at managing uncertainty. They consistently d...

In "Authors of the Storm", Gary Alan Fine offers an inside look at how meteorologists and forecasters predict the weather. Through field observatio...

Enlightenment inquiries into weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions. "British Weath...

At the turn of the nineteenth century, geology - and its claims that the earth had a long and colorful prehuman history - was widely dismissed as d...

Enlightenment inquiries into weather sought to impose order on a force that had the power to alter human life and social conditions. "British Weath...

Every decade since 1950 has seen more floods and more wildfires on every continent. Deserts are expanding, coral reefs are dying, fisheries are dec...

In "Authors of the Storm", Gary Alan Fine offers an inside look at how meteorologists and forecasters predict the weather. Through field observatio...

On this blue planet, long before pterodactyls took to the skies and tyrannosaurs prowled the continents, tiny green organisms populated the ancient...

The so-called 'Bone Wars' of the 1880s, which pitted Edward Drinker Cope against Othniel Charles Marsh in a frenzy of fossil collection and discove...

John H. Ostrom’s expeditions to the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming and Montana in the 1960s resulted in discoveries and research that would change long-h...