All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Paleontology
Major eruption cooled the climate but went unnoticed
Ice-core records suggest that a major 1809 eruption cooled Earth even before the Tambora eruption and ‘the year without a summer’.
- Earth
GPS bolsters view that big Cascadia quakes could hit inland
Satellite tracking of plate movements shows that a magnitude-9 tremor in Pacific Northwest could strike close to urban areas.
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- Life
Climate not really what doomed large North American mammals
Prevalence of a dung fungus over time suggests megafauna extinctions at end of last ice age started before vegetation changed.
- Paleontology
Small ancestor of giant sauropods unearthed
Fossils suggest that the bipedal dinosaur occasionally walked on all fours and could open its mouth wide to gather foliage.
- Earth
Asteroid impact could have stirred the ocean
Model offers one explanation for sudden change in deep-ocean chemistry almost 2 billion years ago.
- Paleontology
Pollination in the pre-flower-power era
Scorpionflies with long-reaching mouthparts may have helped plants procreate long before blossoms evolved.
- Earth
Small earthquakes may not predict larger ones
Quakes far from tectonic plate boundaries may simply be aftershocks of ancient temblors.
- Climate
Mount Kilimanjaro could soon be bald
The world-renowned ice caps could disappear by 2022, new research suggests.
- Chemistry
Aerosols cloud the climate picture
A NASA model incorporates how atmospheric aerosols and greenhouse gases interact, yielding better estimates of the gases' warming and cooling effects.
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As the worms churn
Burrowing animals mix soil and sediments, shaping the environment and scientists’ understanding of it.
- Earth
World’s longest cave formation still growing
Minerals still accumulate in New Mexico’s Snowy River.
