All Stories by Beth Geiger
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EarthHere’s how ice needles sculpt patterns into cold, rocky landscapes
Striking stone patterns decorate remote, frigid landscapes. The recipe for these naturally forming stripes and swirls: Freeze, thaw, repeat.
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EarthAn enormous supervolcano may be hiding under Alaskan islands
A geologic game of connect the dots reveals hints that Mount Cleveland, the Aleutians’ most active volcano, may sit on a giant undersea crater.
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EarthYou’re living in a new geologic age. It’s called the Meghalayan
The newly defined Meghalayan Age began at the same time as a global, climate-driven event that led to human upheavals.
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EcosystemsEarth’s dry zones support a surprising number of trees
A Google Earth-based estimate of dryland forests adds serious leafage to Earth’s total tree count.
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EarthStunning images reveal glacial landscapes under the oceans
The most detailed atlas of the seafloor ever compiled offers colorful imagery and ghostly glimpses of Earth’s glacial past.
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EarthMount St. Helens is a cold-hearted volcano
Geophysics reveals that deep beneath Mount St. Helens, there’s no source of hot magma, just a wedge of cold serpentinite rock. Where is the missing heat?
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EarthRemnants from Earth’s birth linger 4.5 billion years later
Shaken, not stirred: Tungsten isotopes reveal that mantle convection has left some remnants of ancient Earth untouched for 4.5 billion years.
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PaleontologyNew tyrannosaur bridges gap from medium to monstrous
Horse-sized Timurlengia euotica had a brain and ears like its bigger relative Tyrannosaurus rex, which lived millions of years later.
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Oceans3.5 billion years ago, oceans were cool, not hot
Extensive new evidence from South Africa suggests that 3.5 billion years ago, Earth was locked in a cold spell, with isolated blasts of hydrothermal heat that may have helped incubate life.