The chemical composition of gases emitted from volcanoes – which are used to monitor changes in volcanic activity – can change depending on the size of gas bubbles rising to the surface, and relate to the way in which they erupt. The results, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, could be used to improve the forecasting of threats posed by certain volcanoes.
The severity of drought conditions during the demise of the Maya civilisation about 1,000 years ago has been quantified, representing another piece of evidence that could be used to solve the longstanding mystery of what caused the downfall of one of the ancient world’s great civilisations.
Some of the earliest complex organisms on Earth – possibly some of the earliest animals to exist – got big not to compete for food, but to spread their offspring as far as possible.
A University of Cambridge researcher is calling for the voices of women to be given a fairer platform at a leading scientific conference.
Read more about the female scientists at Cambridge taking their fields by storm - and using International Women's Day to encourage others to do the same.
An international collaboration between universities and industry will further develop carbon capture and storage technology – one of the best hopes for drastically reducing carbon emissions – so that it can be deployed in a wider range of sites around the world.
It lived well over 550 million years ago, is known only through fossils and has variously been described as looking a bit like a jellyfish, a worm, a fungus and lichen. But was the ‘mysterious’ Dickinsonia an animal, or was it something else?
A ‘Frankenstein’s monster’ dinosaur may be the missing link between two major dinosaur groups, plugging what was previously a big gap between them.
Newly-described fossil shows how brittle stars evolved in response to pressure from predators, and how an ‘evolutionary hangover’ managed to escape them.
Researchers have found that the formation and breakup of supercontinents over hundreds of millions of years controls volcanic carbon emissions. The results, reported in the journal Science, could lead to a reinterpretation of how the carbon cycle has evolved over Earth’s history, and how this has impacted the evolution of Earth’s habitability.
© 2025 University of Cambridge