Earth And Environmental Sciences

Vanderbilt researchers found a place where early Americans paused on their migrations south and "settled in for a good long while," suggesting a slower pace of settlement than originally believed. Read More

An interdisciplinary study suggests the strange creatures that lived in the Garden of the Ediacaran more than 540 million years ago may have been much more dynamic than experts have thought. Read More

According to the latest national assessment, 85 percent of the people in Bangladesh have access to safe drinking water. However, a new study raises serious questions about the nation's water security. Read More

Analysis of the microscopic wear on the teeth of three man-eating lions reveals that painful dental disease may have been what drove the cats to hunt humans instead of larger prey. Read More

A new study has compared the diet of a variety of Australian megafaunal herbivores from the period when they were widespread (350,000 to 570,000 years ago) to a period when they were in decline (30,000 to 40,000 years ago) by studying their fossil teeth. The analysis suggests that climate change had a significant impact on their diets and may well have been a primary factor in their extinction. Read More

Artificial kidneys, gay-straight alliances and junkyard batteries captured readers' attention in 2016. Read More

Paleoclimatic cave study in California is designed to identify the factors that made megadroughts commonplace in the western U.S. from 5,000 to 8,000 years ago. Read More

New fossil evidence strengthens the proposition that the world’s first mass extinction was caused by ‘ecosystem engineers’ – newly evolved organisms that radically altered the environment. Read More

A microscopic analysis of quartz crystals from an ancient California super-eruption indicates that the process of decompression preceding the eruption took place less than a year before. Read More

Application of new micro-analytical techniques have transformed rocks and gravel buried in a special type of soil into a rich source of data about past climates that can help scientists understand how the climate will change in the future. Read More

A new "geospeedometer" that can measure the amount of time between the formation of an explosive magma melt and an eruption confirms that the process took less than 500 years in several ancient super-eruptions. Read More

Jessica Oster is a member of a small group of earth scientists pioneering the use of mineral cave deposits in stalagmites, collectively known as speleothems, as proxies for the prehistoric climate. Read More

The Earth's first mass extinction event 540 million years ago was caused not by a meteorite impact or volcanic super-eruption, but by the rise of early animals that dramatically changed to prehistoric environment. Read More

VIDEO» For Vanderbilt Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences Jessica Oster, getting data means getting dirty. Oster and her team are collecting mineral deposits deep inside caves to find clues to climate change. Read More

Jessica Oster and her colleagues have shown that the analysis of a stalagmite from a cave in north east India can detect the link between El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian monsoon. Read More

The evolutionary history of whales, sea turtles and other land animals that have returned to the sea details the radical changes to their life style, body shape, physiology that they made to survive in an aquatic environment. Read More

Conditions on Earth for the first 500 million years after it formed may have been surprisingly similar to the present day, complete with oceans, continents and active crustal plates. Read More

Last month volcano expert Calvin Miller had the good fortune to witness the major volcanic eruption taking place in Iceland. Read More

Travel back 450 million years to Middle Tennessee’s beginnings with Molly Miller, professor of earth and environmental sciences Read More

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