Science Daily

The annals of human history have been recorded through text, art, and oral tradition. However, for hundreds of years tropical forests have also kept detailed records of the human activities that unfolded around them. Researchers now describe how the rings, physical chemistry, and DNA of living tropical trees reveal the impacts of native culture as well as the scars of colonial occupation.

Mud wasp nests collected from Kimberley sites with the permission of traditional owners help scientists establish ancient art rock unique to the area is 12,000 years old not 17,000 years old.

Researchers examined the rainfall history of Central America over the last 11,000 years. The results provide context for the development of tropical rainforest ecosystems in the region, and long-sought answers to what has been controlling rainfall in Central America for several millennia.

A year-round acoustic study of marine mammals in the northern Bering Sea is providing scientists with a valuable snapshot of an Arctic world already under drastic pressure from climate change.

Abrupt thawing of permafrost will double previous estimates of potential carbon emissions from permafrost thaw in the Arctic, and is already rapidly changing the landscape and ecology of the circumpolar north, a new study finds.

The Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster today than it did only a few years ago. The reason: it's not just melting on the surface -- but underwater, too.

A new study shows that ancient Siberian hunters created heat resistant pots so that they could cook hot meals - surviving the harshest seasons of the ice age by extracting nutritious bone grease and marrow from meat.

Researchers have for the first time found a connection between the immune systems of different bird species, and the various climatic conditions in which they live. The researchers believe that as the climate changes, some birds may be exposed to diseases that they are not equipped to handle.

A team of scientists has observed, for the first time, the presence of warm water at a vital point underneath a glacier in Antarctica -- an alarming discovery that points to the cause behind the gradual melting of this ice shelf while also raising concerns about sea-level rise around the globe.

Tiny meteorites no larger than grains of sand hold new clues about the atmosphere on ancient Earth, according to scientists.

Tidewater glaciers, the massive rivers of ice that end in the ocean, may be melting underwater much faster than previously thought, according to a new study that used robotic kayaks. The findings, which challenge current frameworks for analyzing ocean-glacier interactions, have implications for the rest of the world's tidewater glaciers, whose rapid retreat is contributing to sea-level rise.

New research describes a dynamic climate and vegetation model that explains when regions across Africa, areas of the Middle East, and the Mediterranean were wetter and drier and how the plant composition changed in tandem, possibly providing migration corridors throughout time.

Using the latest satellite technology from the European Space Agency (ESA), scientists have been tracking patterns of mass loss from Pine Island -- Antarctica's largest glacier.

Contrary to long-held beliefs, humans did not make major changes to the landscape prior to European colonization, according to new research. These new insights into the past could help to inform how landscapes are managed in the future.

Predicting a major transition, such as climate change, is extremely difficult, but a new probabilistic framework is the first step in identifying the path between a shift in two environmental states.

The formation of deep water, which is an important component of the climate system, takes place in only a few parts of the ocean: In the subpolar North Atlantic and in a few places in the Southern Hemisphere. There, the so-called Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) is formed. While today AABW is circulating northwards into the other ocean basins, results of a new study show, that this was different under extreme climatic conditions in the past.

Scientists have discovered Earth's oldest asteroid strike occurred at Yarrabubba, in outback Western Australia, and coincided with the end of a global deep freeze known as a Snowball Earth. The research used isotopic analysis of minerals to calculate the precise age of the Yarrabubba crater for the first time, putting it at 2.229 billion years old -- making it 200 million years older than the next oldest impact.

Researchers have found an explanation for why very little nitrogen could previously be accounted for in the nebulous covering of comets: the building block for life predominantly occurs in the form of ammonium salts, the occurrence of which could not previously be measured. The salts may be a further indication that comet impacts may have made life on Earth possible in the first place.

Arctic sea ice cannot 'quickly bounce back' if climate change causes it to melt, new research suggests.

A study has mapped several sites in Europe containing gas hydrate - a relatively clean fuel which could help bridge the gap between fossil fuels and renewables.