News

The Vice Chancellor’s Awards scheme was established in 2016 to recognise and celebrate excellence in research impact and public engagement. Members of the Department of Earth Sciences and the Sedgwick Museum were nominated for two awards this year; Rob Theodore, from the Sedgwick Museum, for the Professional Services Award, and Sanne Cottaar and he…

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…

A UK-led team of astronomers involving Dr Paul Rimmer, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Earth Sciences with affiliations at Cavendish Astrophysics and the MRC Labratory of Molecular Biology, has discovered a rare molecule – phosphine – in the clouds of Venus, hinting to the possibility of extra-terrestrial life.Astronomers have long s…

Research published today in Science presents a new record of Earth’s temperature and glaciation since the end of the age of the dinosaurs, revealing the changing state of the climate system through the last 66 million years.“Our goal was to create a new reference of past climate over the last 66 million years, which not only incorporates the highes…

A recent study, led by Dr Aleksej Popel and directed by Professor Ian Farnan, both at the Department of Earth Sciences and Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre, has observed the surface breakdown of uranium dioxide, the primary component of nuclear fuel, shedding light on the mechanism and rate of waste leaching.Nuclear power, which currently generates…

The first complete dinosaur skeleton ever identified has finally been studied in detail and found its place in the dinosaur family tree, completing a project that began more than a century and a half ago.The skeleton of this dinosaur, called Scelidosaurus, was collected more than 160 years ago on west Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. The rocks in which it …

An international study, involving Professor Eric Wolff at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, has found that the onset of past climate changes was synchronous over an area extending from the Arctic to the low latitudes. The Last Glacial Period, a cold interval extending from between 115,000 and 11,700 years ago, was punctuate…

A multi-institutional study, involving researchers at the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, has found that pulse-like releases of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere are a pervasive feature of the carbon cycle and that they are closely connected to major changes in Atlantic Ocean circulation.Ice cores from Antarctica show that, in…

This post is a response on behalf of the Department of Earth Sciences to an open letter sent by undergraduates, postgraduates and post-docs prompted by the current vocalisation around racial injustice, and in particular the Black Lives Matter movement. The letter raises concerns about the Department and wider Earth science sector’s track records o…

359 million years ago, at the end of Devonian times, life on Earth suffered a catastrophic extinction—the cause of which has puzzled geologists for decades. Land plants and freshwater life were affected particularly badly. However, unlike other major extinctions, there is no evidence to suggest that major volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts were…

Zircons, and their microscopic mineral inclusions, from an ancient outcrop of Jack Hills, Western Australia, have been at the centre of an intense geological debate: When did the Earth first create a magnetic field? Previous studies have suggested that these minerals record traces of Earth’s magnetic field dated as far back as 4.2 billion years ago…

New chemical analyses of dinosaur eggshell by Dr Robin Dawson (Yale University), Dr Daniel Field (University of Cambridge), and colleagues from the US, Canada and Israel, show that representatives of all three major dinosaur groups were endothermic (i.e., warm-blooded). As such, thermal-regulation is likely to have been the ancestral condition for …

According to Cambridge geologist Neil S. Davies and colleagues, Shakespeare was on the right track—again. Earth’s surface is indeed the stage upon which life has strutted its stuff, and has done so for the last 3.8 billion years. Billions of organisms have graced this stage, making their entrances and exits, but what was the impact of these ‘actors…

A single fossil bone found in Japan is ruffling a few feathers in the world of avian palaeontology. It belongs to a relative of the little auk or dovekie, today the most common seabird and top avian predator in the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. At around 700,000 years old, the fossil’s presence in Japan indicates that during the ‘Ice Age’, the little…

Arts Council England has announced that the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences is among 28 organisations to be awarded Designation Development Funding. A total of £2.1 million has been awarded across the country, drawn from the National Lottery, with the Sedgwick Museum receiving £89,406The Sedgwick Museum will create a world leading centre for rese…