Glass bits, charcoal hint at 56-million-year-old space rock impact
Science News, September 2016A period of skyrocketing global temperatures started with a bang, new research suggests.
Ancient microbe fossils show earliest evidence of shell making
Science News, September 2016Life on Earth got into the shell game more than 200 million years earlier than previously thought.
Barnacles track whale migration
Science News, September 2016Barnacles can tell a whale of a tale. Chemical clues inside barnacles that hitched rides on baleen whales millions of years ago could divulge ancient whale migration routes, new research suggests.
Methane didn’t warm ancient Earth, new simulations suggest
Science News, September 2016Methane wasn’t the cozy blanket that kept Earth warm hundreds of millions of years ago when the sun was dim, new research suggests.
Nuclear blasts, other human activity signal new epoch, group argues
Science News, September 2016Humankind’s bombs, plastics, chickens and more have altered the planet enough to usher in a new chapter in Earth’s geologic history. That’s the majority opinion of a group of 35 experts tasked with evaluating whether the current human-dominated time span, unofficially dubbed the Anthropocene, deserves a formal place in Earth’s geologic timeline alongside the Eocene and the Pliocene.
Natural ally against global warming not as strong as thought
Science News, September 2016A natural ally against global warming may provide far less aid than previously hoped.
Melissa Omand’s clever tech follows the fate of ocean carbon
Science News, September 2016As chief scientist for a voyage of the research vessel Endeavor, oceanographer Melissa Omand oversaw everything from the deployment of robotic submarines to crew-member bunk assignments. The November 2015 expedition 150 kilometers off Rhode Island’s coast was collecting data for Omand’s ongoing investigations of the fate of carbon dioxide soaked up by the ocean.
Primordial continental crust re‑created in lab
Science News, September 2016New experiments have re-created the genesis of Earth’s first continents.
Arctic sea ice shrinks to second-lowest low on record
Science News, September 2016Sea ice around the North Pole has reached its second-lowest low on record, tying with 2007, scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced September 15.
First U.S. ocean monument named in the Atlantic
Science News, September 2016A stretch of ocean off the coast of Cape Cod more than four times the size of Rhode Island has become the first U.S. marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean.