All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Life
Fossil helps document shift from sea to land
New fossils of an ancient, four-limbed creature help fill in the blanks of the evolutionary transition between fish and the first land-adapted vertebrates.
- Earth
Unintended consequences
A full recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica in the coming years could significantly boost warming of the atmosphere over and around the icy continent.
- Earth
A rapid rise for the Andes
New evidence suggests that the South American mountain chain shot up 2.5 kilometers in a geological blink of an eye.
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- Earth
Slip, Slide, Shake
Analyses of GPS and seismic data about one of Antarctica’s largest and most dynamic glaciers provide new insights into the ice stream’s lurching march to the sea.
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- Earth
Natural heat
Heat from the decay of radioactive elements deep within the planet could meet Earth’s energy needs almost three times over — if we could harness all of it.
- Earth
Virtual seismometer
A new supercomputer simulation of the large quake that struck central China earlier this month could help researchers estimate the size of the ground motions experienced in areas that didn’t have seismic instruments.
- Earth
Death downwind
Pollutants generated by human activity in Europe significantly boost ozone concentrations downwind, harming people’s health and causing thousands of premature deaths in North Africa, the Near East and the Middle East.
- Archaeology
Footprints in the ash
Humans may have been walking around what is now central Mexico 40,000 years ago.
- Life
Killer bee colonization
A NASA project will combine satellite observations of plant growth in the continental United States and projections of how climate might change in coming years to estimate where “killer bees” could ultimately survive in the wild.
- Earth
Life down deep
Deep-sea sediments provide a habitat for diverse and abundant populations of microorganisms and may be home to as much as 70 percent of the bacteria on the planet, new studies suggest.
