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Our planet’s surface might seem stable and constant, but it is in fact being continually recycled by plate tectonic processes that send old rocks diving into Earth’s interior. Looking around us, from the mountains of the Himalayas to the bottom of the ocean, many rocks are no more than a few hundred million years old. But...

Fossilised fragments of a skeleton, hidden within a rock the size of a grapefruit, have helped upend one of the longest-standing assumptions about the origins of modern birds. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht found that one of the key skull features that characterises...

New research led by Cambridge earth scientists has documented heavy metal pollution along the North Sea coast over the last century. The study, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, used dog whelks collected from the Belgian and Dutch foreshores as a tool to identify changes in lead pollution over time. It reveals...

A new study involving Cambridge earth scientists has mapped out ocean currents in the North Atlantic over time, revealing changes in the movement of deep water tied to the growth and decline of ice sheets. The research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience , measured isotopic tracers of ocean circulation in samples...