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Categories: Geoscience: Geology, Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology

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Geologists have reconstructed a massive and previously unknown tectonic plate that was once one-quarter the size of the Pacific Ocean. The team had predicted its existence over 10 years ago based on fragments of old tectonic plates found deep in the Earth’s mantle. To the lead researchers surprise, she found that oceanic remnants on northern Borneo must have belonged to the long-suspected plate, which scientists have named Pontus. She has now reconstructed the entire plate in its full glory.

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Palaeontologists discover molecular evidence of phaeomelanin, the pigment that produces ginger coloration. Phaeomelanin is now toxic to animals – this discovery may be first step in understand its evolution. 

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New research has revealed that since the 1980s, Category 4 and 5 hurricanes (maximum wind speed greater than 131 miles per hour) have been arriving three to four days earlier with each passing decade of climate change.

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New research reaffirms that human footprints found in White Sands National Park, NM, date to the Last Glacial Maximum, placing humans in North America thousands of years earlier than once thought.  In September 2021, scientists announced that ancient human footprints discovered in White Sands National Park were between 21,000 and 23,000 years old. This discovery pushed the known date of human presence in North America back by thousands of years and implied that early inhabitants and megafauna co-existed for several millennia before the terminal Pleistocene extinction event. In a follow-up study, researchers used two new independent approaches to date the footprints, both of which resulted in the same age range as the original estimate. 

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Fossil researchers have discovered a novel genus and species of tiny wasp with a mysterious, bulbous structure at the end of each antenna.

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New research has overturned the traditional view that natural rock weathering acts as a carbon sink that removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Instead, this can also act as a large CO2 source, rivaling that of volcanoes.

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To bridge the knowledge gap between volcanologists and atmospheric scientists working on climate change and observing global systems, researchers have characterized volcanic ash samples from many explosive eruptions of a broad compositional range.

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Researchers working to image New Zealand's Hikurangi earthquake fault have uncovered a sea's worth of water buried in the Earth's crust. The water was carried down by eroding volcanic rocks and is believed to be dampening the earthquake fault, allowing it to release most of the pent-up tectonic stress through harmless slow slip earthquakes.

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In a new study, researchers examined the waxy coatings of leaves preserved as organic molecules within sediment from the early-to-middle Holocene, a period of intense warming that occurred due to slow changes in Earth's orbit 11,700 to 4,200 years ago. They found that warming potentially could lead to a previously under-appreciated flux in methane emissions from lakes.

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The mechanism facilitating the smooth movement of the oceanic lithosphere over the underlying asthenosphere (upper mantle) remains poorly understood. Recently, researchers from Japan investigated the effect of water on the seismic properties of olivine rocks, finding that water retention in the asthenosphere can induce sharp drops in shear wave velocity. This also explained other seismic changes observed at the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary. These findings provide invaluable insights into the diverse seismic activities on Earth.

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A new study shows unprecedented heat is likely to lead to the next mass extinction, akin to when the dinosaurs died out, eliminating nearly all mammals in some 250 million years time.

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Palaeontologists have discovered X-ray evidence of proteins in fossil feathers that sheds new light on feather evolution.

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An international study has documented post-mortem bone modifications not linked to consumption.

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Half a million years ago, earlier than was previously thought possible, humans were building structures made of wood, according to new research.

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A groundbreaking study is reshaping our understanding of crocodile evolution by pinpointing the onset of slow growth rates to the Late Triassic period, much earlier than the previously assumed Early Jurassic timeline. The research highlights newly discovered fossil crocodile ancestors (known as crocodylomorphs) that exhibited slow growth rates, similar to modern-day crocodilians. Intriguingly, these early crocodylomorphs were not the lethargic, semi-aquatic creatures we are familiar with today; they were small, active, and fully terrestrial. The study also suggests that this slow-growth strategy was not a mere evolutionary quirk but a survival mechanism, as only the slow-growing crocodylomorphs managed to survive the End-Triassic mass extinction. This stands in stark contrast to the fast-growing dinosaurs of the same era, setting the stage for the divergent evolutionary paths that would later define their modern descendants.

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Marine virologists analyzed sediment from the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth, and identified a new bacteriophage.

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X-rays of an ancient jawless fish shows earliest-known example of internal cartilage skull, unlike that of any other known vertebrate.

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Life on a faraway planet -- if it's out there -- might not look anything like life on Earth. But there are only so many chemical ingredients in the universe's pantry, and only so many ways to mix them. Scientists have now exploited those limitations to write a cookbook of hundreds of chemical recipes with the potential to give rise to life. Their ingredient list could focus the search for life elsewhere in the universe by pointing out the most likely conditions -- planetary versions of mixing techniques, oven temperatures and baking times -- for the recipes to come together.

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Researchers studying diamond-rich rocks from Western Australia's Argyle volcano have identified the missing third key ingredient needed to bring valuable pink diamonds to the Earth's surface where they can be mined, which could greatly help in the global hunt for new deposits.

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A new study shows the isolation and sequencing of more than a century-old RNA molecules from a Tasmanian tiger specimen preserved at room temperature in a museum collection. This resulted in the reconstruction of skin and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from an extinct species for the first time. The researchers note that their findings have relevant implications for international efforts to resurrect extinct species, including both the Tasmanian tiger and the woolly mammoth, as well as for studying pandemic RNA viruses.