History News

A suite of five ancient crocs, including one with teeth like boar tusks and another with a snout like a duck's bill, have been discovered in the Sahara by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno.

Paleontologists now recognize that there were five particularly large, worldwide mass extinction events during the history of life,

Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's.

The evolutionary history of New Zealand's many extinct flightless moa has been re-written in the first comprehensive study of more than 260 sub-fossil specimens to combine all known genetic, anatomical, geological and ecological information about it.

Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt seen in bristlecone pines, the world's oldest trees, according to new research.

Site may date from as early as 9000 BC, by which time hunter-gatherers had reoccupied the region after the last ice age.

An accidental discovery in a laboratory at Oregon State University has solved a quest that over thousands of years has absorbed the energies of ancient Egyptians, the Han dynasty in China, Mayan cultures the creation of a near-perfect blue pigment.

Contrary to preconceived notions, the atmosphere and the oceans were perhaps not formed from vapors emitted during intense volcanism at the dawning of our planet.

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

A geological team, prospecting for petroleum in Egypt's Western Desert, has come upon well-preserved fragments of textiles, bits of metal resembling weapons, and human remains they believe to be traces of the lost army of the Persian ruler, Cambyses II.