Geology News

May 8, 2024

Top Headlines

Heavy Snowfall and Rain May Contribute to Some Earthquakes

May 8, 2024 — Episodes of heavy snowfall and rain likely contributed to a swarm of earthquakes over the past several years in northern Japan, researchers find. Their study shows climate conditions could initiate some ...

Rock Steady: Study Reveals New Mechanism to Explain How Continents Stabilized

May 8, 2024 — Ancient, expansive tracts of continental crust called cratons have helped keep Earth's continents stable for billions of years, even as landmasses shift, mountains rise and oceans form. A new ...

From Fossils to Fuel: Mozambique's Maniamba Basin's Energy Potential

May 7, 2024 — In the ever-expanding search for energy resources, a new study has emerged from Mozambique's Maniamba Basin. Mozambique's Maniamba Basin could be a big source of natural ...

Researchers Show That Slow-Moving Earthquakes Are Controlled by Rock Permeability

May 7, 2024 — A research group explores how the makeup of rocks, specifically their permeability -- or how easily fluids can flow through them -- affects the frequency and intensity of slow slip events. Slow ...

Latest Headlines

updated 7:27pm EDT

Geologists, Biologists Unearth the Atomic Fingerprints of Cancer

May 6, 2024 — Earth scientists have long turned to minute differences in hydrogen atoms to explore the ancient history of our planet. A new study suggests that these same tiny atoms might also lead to new ways to ...

Rock Solid Evidence: Angola Geology Reveals Prehistoric Split Between South America and Africa

May 1, 2024 — A research team has found that ancient rocks and fossils from long-extinct marine reptiles in Angola clearly show a key part of Earth's past -- the ...

Did a Magnetic Field Collapse Trigger the Emergence of Animals?

May 3, 2024 — Researchers uncovered compelling evidence that Earth's magnetic field was in a highly unusual state when the macroscopic animals of the Ediacaran Period -- 635 to 541 million years ago -- diversified ...

Human Activity Is Causing Toxic Thallium to Enter the Baltic Sea, According to New Study

May 2, 2024 — Human activities account for 20% to more than 60% of toxic thallium entering the Baltic Sea over the past eight decades, according to new research. ...

Human Activities Have an Intense Impact on Earth's Deep Subsurface Fluid Flow

Apr. 24, 2024 — Hydrologists predict human-induced underground fluid fluxes to rise with climate change mitigation strategies like carbon ...

Researchers Find Oldest Undisputed Evidence of Earth's Magnetic Field

Apr. 24, 2024 — A new study has recovered a 3.7-billion-year-old record of Earth's magnetic field, and found that it appears remarkably similar to the field surrounding Earth ...

Scientists Trigger Mini-Earthquakes in the Lab

Apr. 19, 2024 — Earthquakes and landslides are famously difficult to predict and prepare for. By studying a miniature version of the ground in the lab, scientists have demonstrated how these events can be triggered ...

The Italian Central Apennines as a Source of CO2

Apr. 19, 2024 — Tectonically active mountains play an important role in the natural CO2 regulation of the atmosphere. Competing processes take place here: At Earth's surface, erosion drives weathering processes that ...

One Third of China's Urban Population at Risk of City Sinking, New Satellite Data Shows

Apr. 18, 2024 — Land subsidence is overlooked as a hazard in cities, according to new research. Scientists used satellite data that accurately and consistently maps ...

'Tug of War' Tactic Enhances Chemical Separations for Critical Materials

Apr. 3, 2024 — Lanthanide elements are important for clean energy and other applications. To use them, industry must separate mixed lanthanide sources into individual elements using costly, time-consuming, and ...

New Step in Tectonic Squeeze That Turns Seafloor Into Mountains

Apr. 2, 2024 — Researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated with when the plates ...

New Geological Study: Scandinavia Was Born in Greenland

Mar. 21, 2024 — The oldest Scandinavian bedrock was 'born' in Greenland, according to a new geological study. The study helps us understand the origin of continents and why Earth is the only planet in our ...

From the Mediterranean Into the Atlantic: The Gibraltar Arc Is Migrating to the West

Mar. 19, 2024 — Oceans are subject to continuous change, mostly over extremely vast periods of time running into millions of years. Researchers have now used computer simulations to demonstrate that a subduction ...

Harnessing Hydrogen at Life's Origin

Mar. 18, 2024 — A new report uncovers how hydrogen gas, the energy of the future, provided energy in the past, at the origin of life 4 billion years ago. Hydrogen gas is clean fuel. It burns with oxygen in the air ...

Even Inactive Smokers Are Densely Colonized by Microbial Communities

Mar. 15, 2024 — Everything is everywhere -- under certain conditions microbial communities can grow and thrive, even in places that are seemingly uninhabitable. This is the case at inactive hydrothermal vents on the ...

Surprising Insights About Debris Flows on Mars

Mar. 14, 2024 — The period that liquid water was present on the surface of Mars may have been shorter than previously thought. Channel landforms called gullies, previously thought to be formed exclusively by liquid ...

Sulfur and the Origin of Life

Mar. 13, 2024 — A new study shines a spotlight on sulfur, a chemical element that, while all familiar, has proved surprisingly resistant to scientific efforts in probing its role in the origin of ...

Mars Attracts: How Earth's Interactions With the Red Planet Drive Deep-Sea Circulation

Mar. 12, 2024 — Scientists have used the geological record of the deep sea to discover a connection between the orbits of Earth and Mars, past global warming patterns and the speeding up of deep ocean circulation. ...

Scientists Propose New Theory That Explains Sand Ripples on Mars and on Earth

Mar. 12, 2024 — Sand ripples are symmetrical. Yet wind -- which causes them -- is very much not. Furthermore, sand ripples can be found on Mars and on Earth. They would be even more fascinating if the same effect ...

New Study Reveals Insight Into Which Animals Are Most Vulnerable to Extinction Due to Climate Change

Mar. 7, 2024 — In a new study, researchers have used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results could help to identify species ...

Rock Weathering and Climate: Low-Relief Mountain Ranges Are Largest Carbon Sinks

Mar. 7, 2024 — For many hundreds of millions of years, the average temperature at the surface of the Earth has varied by not much more than 20 degrees Celsius, facilitating life on our planet. To maintain such ...

Geologists Explore the Hidden History of Colorado's Spanish Peaks

Mar. 4, 2024 — A team has collected dozens of samples from across southeastern Colorado, and their results could help to answer an enduring mystery: What made Colorado's High Plains so ...

Mercury Rising: Study Sheds New Light on Ancient Volcanoes' Environmental Impact

Feb. 29, 2024 — Massive volcanic events in Earth's history that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere frequently correlate with periods of severe environmental change and mass extinctions. A new ...

80 Mph Speed Record for Glacier Fracture Helps Reveal the Physics of Ice Sheet Collapse

Feb. 28, 2024 — New research documents the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. A 6.5-mile crack formed in 2012 over 5-and-a-half minutes, showing that ice shelves can effectively shatter ...

UBC Okanagan Researchers Look to the Past to Improve Construction Sustainability

Feb. 23, 2024 — Researchers are revisiting old building practices -- the use of by-products and cast-offs -- as a way to improve building materials and sustainability of the trade. A technique known as rammed earth ...

Biggest Holocene Volcano Eruption Found by Seabed Survey

Feb. 22, 2024 — A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event's magnitude. As a result, the research team found ...

Early-Stage Subduction Invasion

Feb. 15, 2024 — Our planet's lithosphere is broken into several tectonic plates. Their configuration is ever-shifting, as supercontinents are assembled and broken up, and oceans form, grow, and then start to ...

New 'Time Travel' Study Reveals Future Impact of Climate Change on Coastal Marshes

Feb. 15, 2024 — A new study offers a glimpse into the possible impact of climate change on coastal wetlands 50 years or longer into the future. Scientists are usually forced to rely on computer models to project the ...

Researchers Studying Ocean Transform Faults, Describe a Previously Unknown Part of the Geological Carbon Cycle

Feb. 12, 2024 — This study reports widespread mineral carbonation of mantle rocks in an oceanic transform fueled by magmatic degassing of CO2. The findings describe a previously unknown part of the geological carbon ...

Ice Cores Provide First Documentation of Rapid Antarctic Ice Loss in the Past

Feb. 8, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shrunk suddenly and dramatically at the end of the Last Ice Age, around eight thousand years ago. The evidence, ...