All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Earth
Britain’s biggest meteorite strike
An unusual layer of rock found along Britain's northwestern coast formed from the debris thrown out of a crater when a meteorite struck nearby more than 1 billion years ago.
- Paleontology
Salty Old Cellulose: Tiny fibers found in ancient halite deposits
Researchers have recovered microscopic bits of cellulose from 253-million-year-old salt deposits deep underground.
- Earth
New Recipe for Pollution Stew: Another chemical culprit adds to ozone
A reactive chemical in urban air cleans up some pollutants but could introduce another.
- Earth
Weather maker
The North Atlantic's Gulf Stream affects the overlying atmosphere more strongly than previously suspected.
- Earth
Ocean ups and downs—the long view
Sea level has dropped about 170 meters in the past 80 million years, thanks in part to the thinning of ocean crust and the formation of land-based ice sheets.
- Earth
Ancient Chasm: Parts of Grand Canyon may be 17 million years old
The chemical composition of mineral formations in caves along the Grand Canyon may provide fresh insight into the chasm's history, including its age and the rate at which it was carved.
- Tech
Finding mass graves from on high
Aerial surveys that scan the ground at many wavelengths, some visible and some not, may offer a way to quickly and easily detect mass grave sites.
- Humans
Calling all clues …
Add flip-open cell phones to the list of crime-scene items that might harbor a suspect's DNA.
- Anthropology
Hairy Forensics: Isotopes can identify the regions where a person may have lived
The proportions of certain chemical isotopes in someone's hair can help detectives pin down that individual's region of origin and track their recent movements, a finding that could be particularly useful in forensic investigations.
- Earth
Going Down: Climate change, water use threaten Lake Mead
If climate changes as expected and future water use is not curtailed, there's a 50 percent chance that Arizona's Lake Mead, one of the southwestern United States' key reservoirs, will become functionally dry in the next couple of decades.
- Paleontology
From China, the tiniest pterodactyl
Researchers excavating the fossil-rich rocks of northeastern China have discovered yet another paleontological marvel: a flying reptile the size of a sparrow.
- Paleontology
Flying Deaf? Earliest bats probably didn’t echolocate
Fossils of a cardinal-sized creature recently unearthed in western Wyoming suggest that primitive bats developed the ability to fly before they could track their prey with biological sonar.
