Continents Move, Life Evolves
13.7 billion years of evolution in 85 seconds.
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Groundwater Depletion Threatens U.S. Food Security
Researchers believe the nation’s food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture. The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints the highest resolution picture yet of how groundwater depletion varies across space and time in California’s Central Valley and the High Plains of the…
‘The Particle at the End of the Universe’ Gets Real
Caltech physicist Sean Carroll makes the search for the Higgs boson a scientific detective story. At heart is the mystery of the universe.
What the Amazon Looked Like Before Columbus
Ancient people had minimal, if any, impact on the outlying forests of South America’s Amazon Basin, and settlements near rivers were likely limited, indicates a new study of soil collected from the western and central Amazon. Previous research has suggested that, prior to the arrival of Christopher Columbus and Europeans, indigenous people built dense, complex…
“Lethally Hot” Earth Was Devoid of Life—Could It Happen Again?
Extinctions during the early Triassic period left Earth a virtual wasteland, largely because life literally couldn’t take the heat, a new study suggests. Between 247 to 252 million years ago, Earth was reeling from a mass extinction called the end-Permian event. The die-off had wiped out most life on Earth, including most land plants. The…
Shark-Headed Human Ancestor Swam With Fishes
Peer far enough back in the human family lineage, and you’ll find a fishy ancestor that looked surprisingly like a shark. In fact, this now-extinct fish was among the first to split from sharks, whose bones are made of cartilage, to evolve into a line of tough-boned species that includes everything from bony fish to…
Gibbons and Opera Singers Use the Same Voice Tools
It’s an old party trick—sucking helium from balloons so you can sing like a Wizard of Oz munchkin. When gibbons inhale this non-toxic gas, researchers can detect much more sophisticated impersonations. It turns out that gibbon vocalization techniques mirror those of highly trained soprano opera singers. “We’ve shown how the gibbons’ distinctive song uses the…