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science and insights for people who care about Earth, its resources and its environment

Evolution of Earth and Life

coral in Bikini atoll
June 28, 2017

The radiation-exposed corals of Bikini Atoll may hold insights on cancer

Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment

Stanford researchers are exploring how corals that re-colonized Bikini Atoll after nuclear bomb tests 70 years ago have adapted to persistent radiation. Their work is featured in a PBS series.

Evolution of Earth and Life
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May 10, 2017
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Stanford News Service

A new analysis by Stanford researchers reveals that the ideal temperature for the spread of mosquito-born diseases like dengue, chikungunya and Zika is 29 degrees C. This finding helps predict disease outbreaks in a warming world.

Climate Change, Evolution of Earth and Life
Image of chemical variation across the lowland Peruvian Amazon
May 26, 2015
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Carnegie Science

New research by Greg Asner illustrates a hidden tapestry of chemical variation across the lowland Peruvian Amazon, with plants in different areas producing an array of chemicals that changes across the region’s topography. 

Evolution of Earth and Life
March 4, 2015

Animal functional diversity started out poor, became richer over time

<p>Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences</p>

New research by Jonathan Payne's lab refutes a hypothesis by the famed evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould that marine creatures underwent an “early burst” of functional diversity during the dawn of animal life.

Oceans, Evolution of Earth and Life
Jonathan Payne
February 19, 2015

Animals tend to evolve toward larger sizes over time

Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences

New Stanford research shows that animals tend to evolve toward larger body sizes over time. Over the past 542 million years, the mean size of marine animals has increased 150-fold.

Evolution of Earth and Life
Eric Lambin
November 20, 2014

Urban agriculture on the rise

International Water Management Institute

A new study by Eric Lambin finds that the land in and around cities are increasingly becoming important centers of food production worldwide. 

 

Evolution of Earth and Life
Suzanne Birner and Lars Hansen collecting structural data
July 28, 2014

Powerful tool could unlock secrets of Earth’s interior ocean

<p>Stanford School Of Earth Sciences</p>

A new way of determining the hydrogen content in mantle rocks could lead to improved estimates of Earth’s interior water and a better understanding of our planet’s early evolution.

Evolution of Earth and Life
lake surprise shoreline
June 5, 2014

Mystery of ancient American lakes solved

<p>Stanford School Of Earth Sciences</p>

New Stanford research shows that enormous lakes that existed in the western United States during the peak of the last Ice Age grew large due to a cooler climate and a reduced evaporation rate. The finding could help improve computer simulations of climate change.

Climate Change, Evolution of Earth and Life
Asteroid illustration showing relative size.
April 14, 2014

Scientists reconstruct ancient impact that dwarfs dinosaur-extinction blast

A new study by Norm Sleep and Don Lowe reveals the power and scale of a cataclysmic asteroid strike on the Earth that happened 3.26 billion years ago.

Evolution of Earth and Life
Brachiopod fossil
March 25, 2014

Counting calories in the fossil record

Why did the ancestors of clams and oysters flourish after one of the worst mass extinctions in Earth’s history while another class of shelled creatures, the brachiopods, sharply decline? A new study that uses fossils to calculate the food intake of both groups seeks to answer that question.

Evolution of Earth and Life
Kate Maher hold two beakers of soil.
March 14, 2014

Understanding how mountains and rivers make life possible

Kate Maher and Page Chamberlain have modeled how the topography and rock composition of a landscape affects the process by which carbon dioxide is transferred to oceans and eventually buried in Earth’s interior.

 

 

Evolution of Earth and Life

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