Researchers find that shifts in Earth’s orbit can trigger abrupt climate changes, even in warm periods without ice sheets.

According to a recent study, events geologists use to distinguish transitions between geological chapters in Earth's story follow a hidden hierarchical pattern, one that could shed light on both past ...

Long before Earth formed, tiny mineral grains were already drifting through space, forged in the final breaths of dying stars ...

A rocky outcrop in a remote corner of northern Quebec appears serene in its eerie isolation on the eastern shore of Canada’s Hudson Bay. But over the past two decades, this exposed remnant of ancient ...

For roughly 2 billion years of Earth's early history, the atmosphere contained no oxygen, the essential ingredient required for complex life. Oxygen began building up during the period known as the ...

Earth has a long and dramatic history, and one recurring theme is extinction. Did you know that over the last 500 million years, our planet experienced five major mass extinction events? These events ...

New reconstructions of 540 million years of climate history show the planet tumbling between icehouse and hothouse states, revealing how rare and vulnerable our temperate moment is. Some 4 billion ...

Our species likes it cold. Homo sapiens evolved in — and still inhabits — one of Earth’s rare and fragile ice ages, periods distinguished not by an abundance of saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths ...

Across the Northern Hemisphere, people are soaking up the long hours of summer sunlight, with no idea that they’re experiencing some of the shortest days since modern timekeeping began—by a ...