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Specially-adapted drones, developed by an international team involving scientists from the University of Cambridge, are transforming how we forecast eruptions by allowing close-range measurements of previously inaccessible and hazardous volcanoes.

Duria Antiquior, or ‘Ancient Dorsetshire’, has for many years been an important part of the Sedgwick Museum displays. The painting, which depicts a prehistoric shoreline teaming with marine life, has been described as ‘the first true scene from deep time’ to be based on fossil evidence. Today the painting sets off for Paris where it will form part of a new exhibition ‘The Origins of the World: The invention of Nature in the 19th Century’ at the Musée D’Orsay - opening later in the autumn.

Brazil’s Borborema Plateau is in the middle of the South American plate - well away from the dynamic tectonic forces of subduction in the Andes Volcanic Belt. Plate theory suggests that passive areas like Borborema should be flat and stable, with little movement of the crust. But the region, which is thousands of kilometres across and a domed shape, has actually risen by up to a kilometre over the last 30 million years.