Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Climate
Hurricane Patricia’s howling winds smash records
Hurricane Patricia’s winds are now the fastest ever recorded in a tropical cyclone, making it the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere.
- Paleontology
300 million-year-old giant shark swam the Texas seas
Fossil find shows oldest known ‘supershark,’ about the size of a limo, prowled the ocean 300 million years ago.
- Climate
Climate change could shift New England’s fall foliage
Climate change could make for earlier or later fall color, depending on where you live in New England.
- Earth
4.1-billion-year-old crystal may hold earliest signs of life
A carbon impurity embedded inside an ancient zircon crystal suggests that life on Earth appeared before 4.1 billion years ago.
- Earth
4.1-billion-year-old crystal may hold earliest signs of life
New evidence suggests that life on Earth arose before 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million years earlier than previous estimates.
- Paleontology
New evidence weakens case against climate in woolly mammoths’ death
Hunters responsible for woolly mammoths’ extinction, suggests a chemical analysis of juveniles’ tusks.
- Climate
High-flying birds recruited for meteorology
Monitoring the midflight movements of high-flying birds can provide valuable meteorological data, new research shows.
- Environment
Air pollutants enter body through skin
Although scientists have largely viewed skin as an unimportant portal to blood for toxic air pollutants, new human data show that skin can surpass lungs as a route of entry.
- Earth
Surface spills near fracking sites implicated in water contamination
Chemical spills from fracking operations are the likely source of chemicals found in drinking water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania.
- Oceans
Oxygen in Black Sea has declined by more than a third since 1955
The Black Sea’s oxygen-rich surface layer shrank by more than a third from 1955 through 2013, compressing marine habitats and bringing toxic hydrogen sulfide closer to the surface.
- Animals
Jumping conchs triumph at overheated athletics
“Simple” circulatory system outdoes fancier ones in delivering oxygen for jumping conchs in simulated climate change conditions.
- Oceans
Widespread coral bleaching threatens world’s reefs
The world’s corals are experiencing their third major bleaching event in 17 years.
