The social cost of carbon — an important figure global policymakers use to analyze the benefits of climate and energy policies — is too low, finds UC Davis study.

A fossil plant preserved roughly 47 million years ago has a such a strange assortment of features that scientists were unable to find a plant family, living or extinct, to which it might belong.

An international research team led by the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP) and the Museu Balear de Ciències Naturals (MUCBO | MBCN) have described a fossil animal that lived between 270 and 280 million years ago in present-day Mallorca. The discovery is exceptional, not only because of the number of fossil remains found, but also because it is the oldest known gorgonopsian on the planet, the lineage of saber-toothed predators that would eventually give rise to mammals. The research has been published in the journal journal Nature Communications.

Scientists have discovered the oldest known animal with saber teeth: a predator that lived 270 million years ago. This animal, from before the age of the dinosaurs, was a dog-like creature that was related to the ancestors of mammals.

Researchers at University of Tsukuba assessed the effects of a large-scale wildfire in April 2020 within the Chornobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine—a radiologically contaminated region—on the redistribution of radionuclides. Their study used leaching tests and long-term river observation data to analyze these effects. The findings revealed that wildfires increase the mobility of ¹³⁷Cs and ⁹⁰Sr in rivers.

In a study published in Science China Earth Sciences, researchers present findings showing that plant DNA metabarcoding from lake sediments provides a higher resolution and more accurate depiction of local vegetation on the Tibetan Plateau than traditional pollen analysis, with a broader range of species detected.