Each layer records a snapshot of the Earth system over millions to billions of years. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert!

Did ancient sunscreen and sewing needles save humanity? In a nutshell 41,000 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field weakened to ...

But Earth’s early history, including epochs with high ambient temperatures and no enveloping atmosphere, implies that surface water would have evaporated and drifted back into space. The water ...

According to the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the professional organization in charge of defining Earth’s time scale ... recent”) epoch, which began 11,700 years ago ...

The duo suggested that we are living in a new geological epoch. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and modern humans have been around for around a mere 200,000 years. Yet in that time we have ...

3 min read The start of the Triassic period (and the Mesozoic era) was a desolate time in Earth's history. Something—a bout of violent volcanic eruptions, climate change, or perhaps a fatal run ...

The scale functions as a massive calendar, dividing the history of life into eras, periods, and epochs based on fossil evidence. In this feature, explore the history of life on Earth as we know it ...

Humans have remodeled the Earth so profoundly that in 2000, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer proposed that the Holocene epoch had ended and the "Anthropocene," or ...

Despite the irreversible damage caused, humanity’s ongoing mitigation efforts suggest that while our footprint on Earth’s geology is indelible, restoration is possible. Yet, achieving ...

Geologists report that Earth's first crust probably had chemical features ... and the project contributes to the study of vast geologic epochs. Thorsten Becker, a geologist at the University ...