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Colossal undersea mountains, towering up to thousands of metres high, stir up deep sea currents: impacting how our ocean stores heat and carbon. An international team, led by the University of Cambridge, used numerical modelling to quantify how underwater turbulence around these mountains, called seamounts, influences...

The discovery, published in Nature, opens a new window on early animal evolution At first glance, the simple, spikey sea sponge is no creature of mystery. No brain. No gut. No problem dating them back 700 million years. Yet convincing sponge fossils only go back about 540 million years, leaving a 160-million-year gap in...

Congratulations to David Hodell, Woodwardian Professor of Geology at the Department of Earth Sciences, on being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. This year, over 90 exceptional researchers from across the world have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences. David...

What do the rumblings of Iceland’s volcanoes have in common with the now peaceful volcanic islands off Scotland’s western coast and the spectacular basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland? Iceland sits over a mantle plume — a fountain of hot rock that rises from Earth’s core-mantle boundary — explaining...