Taxonomy term

Between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago, dozens of ice-age megafauna species went extinct. Various causes, from climate-driven habitat changes to overhunting to extraterrestrial impacts, have been cited for these extinctions. But new research looking at fossils of large herbivores such as bison, horses and llama supports the idea that a worldwide uptick in moisture was a main driver of the extinction trend.

The food-energy-water nexus has become trendy for multidisciplinary research. The author proposes another such multidisciplinary field thirsting for study.

As a college student at San Francisco State University, Lisa D. White’s first choice of major was photography. She was drawn to landscapes, and dreamed of becoming “the black female Ansel Adams,” she tells me, surrounded by fossils. We’re in a lab at the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) in Berkeley, where she is assistant director of Education and Public Programs. She is also a micropaleontologist, and from 1990 until joining UCMP in 2012, she was professor of geology and later associate dean at San Francisco State University.

Space is deadly, and the explorers who risk their lives to venture farther into these depths rank among the bravest heroes of all time. In “Mankind Beyond Earth: The History, Science, and Future of Human Space Exploration,” Claude A. Piantadosi portrays the history and future of space exploration through the lens of space medicine, which reminds us of the many threats to the human body that await as we venture away from our planet.