Our species likes it cold. Homo sapiens evolved in — and still inhabits — one of Earth’s rare and fragile ice ages, periods distinguished not by an abundance of saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths ...

To spread awareness that “climate change isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s a human story woven into the fabric of our civilization’s rise and fall,” Georgetown University historian Professor ...

Earth’s Ediacaran Period, roughly 630 to 540 million years ago, has always been something of a magnetic minefield for scientists. During earlier and later time periods, tectonic plates kept a steady ...

New research suggests Earth’s climate can swing wildly on surprisingly short timescales — even during hot, ice-free greenhouse periods. By studying ancient sediments from the Late Cretaceous, ...

Scientists at the University of Southampton have uncovered evidence from ancient rocks that Earth's climate continued to fluctuate during its most extreme ice age—known as Snowball Earth. During the ...

Representing the longest continuous record of the Earth’s climate, the giant ice core may soon unlock some much-wanted data into Earth's climate history. Reading time 3 minutes Antarctic ice cores are ...

When we think of coral reefs, we picture bright fish, clear water and colourful corals. But reefs have also shaped the planet in deeper ways. Our new study, published in Proceedings of the National ...