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Categories: Geoscience: Geology, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

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A new study analyzing declassified Cold War satellite imagery reveals 396 previously undocumented Roman forts and reports that these forts were constructed from east to west, spanning from what is now western Syria to northwestern Iraq. The analysis refutes Father Antoine Poidebard's claim that the forts were located along a north-south axis.

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Examining how plates move in Earth's mantle and how mountains form is no easy feat. Certain rocks that have sunk deep into Earth's interior and then returned from there can deliver answers.

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The explosion of the underwater volcano Kolumbo in the Aegean Sea in 1650 triggered a destructive tsunami that was described by historical eye witnesses. A group of researchers has now surveyed Kolumbo's underwater crater with modern imaging technology and reconstructed the historical events. They found that the eyewitness accounts of the natural disaster can only be described by a combination of a landslide followed by an explosive eruption.

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Venus, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. The finding sets up tantalizing scenarios regarding the possibility of early life on Venus, its evolutionary past and the history of the solar system.

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Recently discovered microfossils date back half a billion years. Resembling modern-day algae, they provide insight into early life in our oceans.

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A team has identified several factors to help answer a fundamental ecological question: why is there a ridiculous abundance of species some places on earth and a scarcity in others? What factors, exactly, drive animal diversity? They discovered that what an animal eats (and how that interacts with climate) shapes Earth's diversity.

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Primatologists are using genetic analysis to determine the geographic origin of ancient mummified baboons found in Egypt. The team finds evidence that the two legendary trading regions of Punt and Adulis may have been the same place separated by a thousand years of history.

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Diamonds contain evidence of the mantle rocks that helped buoy and grow the ancient supercontinent Gondwana from below, according to new research. These findings demonstrate that superdeep diamonds can provide a window through space and time into the supercontinent growth and formation process.

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An international team re-created molten rock conditions deep within the Earth and measured the spin states of iron atoms within that rock melt. An iron atom's spin state drives its magnetic behavior and reactivity in chemical reactions, and can influence whether iron prefers to be in the molten or solid rock. 

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Biologists have long known mushrooms of the genus Mycena, commonly known as bonnet mushrooms, as fungi that live off of dead trees and plants. New research demonstrates that bonnets can also find their ways into young, healthy trees and plants, where they try to cooperate. In doing so, they have made an evolutionary leap which challenges our understanding of the ecological roles of fungi.

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Scientists have uncovered 13 mummified cadavers of mice from the summits of Andean volcanoes that stretch nearly 4 miles above sea level. Analyses of the mummies, combined with the capture of live specimens, suggest that the mice scaled the Mars-like peaks on their own -- and are somehow managing to live on them.

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The fossils of a 170-million-year-old ancient marine reptile from the Age of Dinosaurs have been identified as the oldest-known mega-predatory pliosaur -- a group of ocean-dwelling reptiles closely related to the famous long-necked plesiosaurs. The findings are rare and add new knowledge to the evolution of plesiosaurs.

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New high-resolution images of the Long Valley Caldera indicate that the subsurface environment is cooling off, releasing gas and fluids that contribute to seismic activity.

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Formed millions to billions of years ago, diamonds can shine light into the darkest and oldest parts of the Earth's mantle. The analysis of ancient, superdeep diamonds dug up from mines in Brazil and Western Africa, has exposed new processes of how continents evolved and moved during the early evolution of complex life on Earth. These diamonds that were formed between 650 and 450 million years ago on the base of the supercontinent Gondwana, were analysed by an international team of experts, and have shown how supercontinents such as Gondwana were formed, stabilised, and how they move around the planet.

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About 40,000 years ago, Neanderthals, who had lived for hundreds of thousands of years in the western part of the Eurasian continent, gave way to Homo sapiens, who had arrived from Africa. This replacement was not sudden, and the two species coexisted for a few millennia, resulting in the integration of Neanderthal DNA into the genome of Sapiens. Researchers have analyzed the distribution of the portion of DNA inherited from Neanderthals in the genomes of humans (Homo sapiens) over the last 40,000 years. These statistical analyses revealed subtle variations in time and geographical space.

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Surface ice in Greenland has been melting at an increasing rate in recent decades, while the trend in Antarctica has moved in the opposite direction, according to researchers.

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A new study has reconstructed the well-preserved but damaged skull of a great ape species that lived about 12 million years ago. The species, Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, may be crucial to understanding great ape and human evolution.

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DNA analysis of mummified feces reveals two pre-Columbian Caribbean cultures ate a wide variety of plants, like maize, sweet potato, and peanuts -- and tobacco and cotton traces were detected too, according to a new study.

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Evolutionary biologists have for the first time decoded the genetic lineage of a famous killer whale and a pod that once worked alongside whale hunters off the coast of Australia. In the Australian tradition of claiming New Zealand's celebrities as its own, Old Tom, the leader of a pod of killer whales that famously helped whalers hunt baleen whales in the 20th century, has ancestral links to modern-day killer whales in New Zealand, according to new DNA research. Old Tom also shared a common ancestor with killer whales from Australasia, the North Pacific, and North Atlantic Oceans, but is most similar to modern New Zealand killer whales. However, most of Tom's DNA code is not found in other killer whales globally suggesting that the killer whales of Eden may have become extinct locally.

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People who carry three gene variants that have been inherited from Neanderthals are more sensitive to some types of pain, according to a new study.