Earth & Climate

A rainforest in Antarctica

This is what the Antarctic forest could have looked like 90 million years ago. (Photo: Alfred Wegener Institute) Today Antarctica is the most hostile and...

Featured picture: Dangerous hunters

Cats are our favorite pets - and are considered by many to be "cute velvet paws". But the animals are less harmless than their...

Feathered Raptor of the End Times discovered

Artist's impression of Dineobellator. (Photo: Sergey Krasovskiy) It had feathers, an iron grip and a flexible tail for balance in chases: fossil hunters discovered a...

When the North Atlantic pump stutters

The North Atlantic circulation current drives the warm North Atlantic current and forms cold deep water (NADW) (Image: Yair Rosenthal / Rutgers University New...

Evolution: the riddle of body sizes

Living environment in the Geiseltal 47 million years ago: Propalaeotherium (left) and Tapir Lophiodon (center) (image: Marton Szabo) The ancestors of today's horses have changed...

Featured picture: A virus clears the air

The novel corona virus SARS-Cov-2 has been paralyzing large parts of the world for weeks. But the pandemic also has positive effects - at...

Oldest fossil of a bilaterally symmetrical animal

This is how the ancestor of Bilateria might have looked. (Image: Sohail Wasif / University of California Riverside) What did the ancestor of all bilateria...

How plants shape mountain formation

In this Mediterranean climate zone in the mountains of central Chile, vegetation and precipitation lead to comparatively heavily weathered soil profiles. (Image: Todd Ehlers) They...

Hidden influx of nutrients in the Arctic

Tundra in Alaska. (Photo: Dieter Meyerl / iSTock) The frozen soil of the arctic permafrost areas is surprisingly permeable. Because groundwater also collects under these...

Hand evolution: fossil “fish fingers” discovered

Artist's impression of Elpistostege. (Image: Katrina Kenny) A creature from the era of land conquest: paleontologists present a "missing link" in the evolution of prehistoric...

A modern bird from the time of the dinosaurs

Skull of the fossil bird Asteriornis maastrichtensis (Image: Daniel J. Field / University of Cambridge) When did the first representatives of modern birds emerge? So...

Ice loss at the poles characterizes tropical weather

Ice off the Antarctic coast. (Image: Maria Stenzel) Researchers say that what happens at the cold "ends" of the world can have a significant impact in...

Featured picture: Cooling dust cover

What lies here like a light blue blanket over North Africa and the Middle East is atmospheric dust. It has an important cooling effect...

Hummingbird little saurian in amber

The newly discovered mini saurian was only the size of a hummingbird and was likely to feed on insects. (Image: HAN Zhixin) The hummingbird family...

Featured picture: Rendezvous in the ice

Two ships are slowly approaching each other in the twilight of the Arctic polar winter: they are the "Polarstern" and their Russian supply icebreaker...

Networked life in the primeval sea

Close-up of a Rangeomorpha fossil from Newfoundland. (Image: Alex Liu) Fern-like organisms without mouth and organs were among the first multicellular animals on our planet....

The buffer effect of the tropical forests is decreasing

View over the rainforest in Ivindo National Park in Gabon. (Image: Kath Jeffery) The tropical rainforests are the "green lungs" of our planet - and...

Was our earth once a water world?

This pillow basalt formed the bedrock of the Urozeans 3.2 billion years ago. (Image: Benjamin Johnson) Oceans now cover three quarters of our planet. But...

Primeval “re-evolution”

What was Facivermis from the Cambrian seas? (Image: Franz Anthony) Leg loss 518 million years ago: Researchers have solved the riddle of a bizarre prehistoric...

The survivors of the Toba outbreak

The Dhaba site in India (Image: Christina Neudorf) When the Toba volcano erupted 74,000 years ago, this had worldwide consequences. But they were obviously less...

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