A new analysis of rocks thought to be at least 2.5 billion years old helps clarify the chemical history of Earth's mantle -- the geologic layer beneath the planet's crust. The findings hone scientists ...

New reconstructions of 540 million years of climate history show the planet tumbling between icehouse and hothouse states, ...

A new study traces a 120-million-year-old 'super-eruption' to its source, offering new insights into Earth's complex geological history. Geologists led by the University of Maryland and the University ...

Smithsonian researcher Wriju Chowdhury is part of an expedition searching for 4-billion-year-old crystals that could uncover the secrets behind Earth’s early history Emma Saaty A remote geologic ...

The National Museum of Natural History is among the first eight Smithsonian sites the Trump administration announced it will review.

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 ...

Life made the modern Earth as much as the Earth made life, a new book by a philosopher of consciousness argues. That dynamic leaves humans with a unique set of moral questions, Peter Godfrey-Smith of ...

A thin slice of the ancient rocks collected from Gakkel Ridge near the North Pole, photographed under a microscope and seen under cross-polarized light. Field width ~ 14mm. Credit: E. Cottrell, ...