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 ...

It is often seen as the scourge of modern society, littering our highways, byways and beaches. But now a new study argues that modern plastics are also a valuable archive documenting activities and ...

Around 700 million years ago, the Earth cooled so much that scientists believe massive ice sheets encased the entire planet like a giant snowball. This global deep freeze, known as Snowball Earth, ...

Millions of people around the world will pause on Tuesday, at least for a moment, to mark Earth Day. It's an annual event founded by people who hoped to stir activism to clean up and preserve a planet ...

Scientists say they have found geochemical traces of Earth’s ancient self hidden far below our feet, suggesting that parts of the planet that existed before the Moon-forming collision 4.5 billion ...

A new book called The Burning Earth: A History takes on a massive question: How did we get here? “Here” being this point in environmental history and decades deep into the climate crisis. Over the ...

The field of paleoenvironmental geochemistry examines the chemical signatures preserved in Earth’s ancient rocks to reconstruct past environments and decipher the evolution of our planet’s surface ...

Early Eocene forest, Wyoming, U.S. Illustration by Julius Csotonyi, Smithsonian Institution Pollinators play a vital role in fertilising flowers, which grow into seeds and fruits and underpin our ...