Taxonomy term

In 1903, a skeleton was found in a limestone cave in Cheddar Gorge, near Somerset, England. Radiocarbon dating in the 1970s revealed the remains to be more than 10,000 years old, making it the oldest near-complete human skeleton found in Britain. Now, as yet unpublished research suggests Cheddar Man’s genome reveals a surprisingly different appearance for the Mesolithic man from what’s long been thought, according to researchers who analyzed DNA from the skeleton.

Rainfall can trigger landslides, and it can also cause slow-moving slides to speed up. But researchers have observed that rain also appears to cause landslides composed of clay-rich material to take longer to start moving, and to move slower than expected.

Predicting how much the ocean surface will rise in the coming years requires complicated, global-scale bookkeeping of the many factors that affect sea levels. In a new study, scientists have, for the first time, quantified the role of ocean-bottom deformation — the gradual deepening of ocean basins under the weight of more water — in both global and regional sea-level rise, an effort that may help produce more accurate sea-level projections.

Earth’s rock record preserves evidence of numerous natural processes, from evolution and extinction to catastrophes and climate change, and sometimes even planetary configurations. In a new study, a well-preserved sequence of Triassic lake sediments bearing evidence of cyclical patterns of climate change in the Newark Basin confirms the existence of a Milankovitch cycle — a periodic change in the shape of Earth’s orbit caused by, in this case, Earth’s gravitational interactions with Jupiter and Venus. The finding can be used to precisely date other events in the geological record, and inform climate and astronomical models.