All Stories by Sid Perkins
- Archaeology
Ancient ash flow brought sudden death
Analysis of the excavation in Herculaneum of the victims of the A.D. 79 eruption of Italy's Mount Vesuvius indicates that when the initial ash flow swept through the city, it arrived so quickly that some residents didn't even have time to flinch.
- Earth
Lasers show atmosphere differs from models
New observations of the middle and upper atmosphere over Earth's polar regions may require scientists to revamp their mathematical models of temperature and other environmental conditions at high altitudes.
- Earth
Microbes put ancient carbon on the menu
Scientists have found microorganisms within Kentucky shale that are eating the ancient carbon locked within the rock, a previously unrecognized dietary habit that could have a prevalent role in the weathering and erosion of similar sedimentary rock at many other locations.
- Earth
Thick ice scraped rock bottom in Arctic
Scuffs, scrapes, and gouges found atop undersea plateaus and ridges in the Arctic Ocean suggest that kilometer-thick ice shelves covered much of the ocean there during some previous ice ages.
- Earth
A quick recovery after dinosaur deaths
Evidence from 65-million-year-old sediments suggests that a single impact from space wiped out the dinosaurs and that ecosystems recovered from the trauma in only a few thousand years.
- Earth
New analysis rejuvenates Himalayas
The Asian mountain range that includes some of the tallest peaks in the world turns out to be about 15 million years younger than geologists previously thought.
- Earth
Satellites verify greenhouse-gas effects
Comparisons of data obtained from instruments that orbited Earth more than 25 years apart provide direct evidence that the planet's greenhouse effect increased significantly between 1970 and 1997.
- Paleontology
Jumbled bones show birds on the menu
A fossilized pellet of partially digested bones of juvenile and baby birds provides the first evidence that birds served as food for predators.
- Paleontology
First brachiosaur tooth found in Asia
A fossil tooth found along a dinosaur trackway in South Korea is the first evidence that brachiosaurs roamed Asia.
- Earth
Is there a vent in the global greenhouse?
Satellite observations of ocean temperatures in tropical regions of the western Pacific suggest that when ocean temperatures there warm up, the amount of heat-trapping cirrus clouds decreases, possibly providing a heat-venting effect that could help reduce global warming.
- Earth
A Nation Aflame
In the wake of one of the worst fire seasons in the past 50 years, scientists are assessing risk as more people move into fire-prone areas and developing ways to better predict the behavior of--and the potential for--wildfires.
- Paleontology
Extinctions Tied to Impact from Space
Evidence trapped in 250-million-year-old sediments may help researchers pin the ultimate blame for the massive extinctions that occurred then on the impact of an extraterrestrial object about 9 kilometers across.
