Widespread volcanic eruptions caused rapid warming during the Early Jurassic. Rhenium isotopes reveal that this led to positive climate feedbacks as higher temperatures increased weathering of organic...

Mars is often described as a ‘stagnant lid’ planet: unlike Earth, its surface is not broken into moving tectonic plates. Because plate tectonics drives volcanism, recycling and continent–building on Earth, many scientists assumed Mars lacked the conditions needed to produce similarly complex crust. However, this new study challenges that view, suggesting that Mars could have produced highly evolved crust through intense internal recycling.

The exhibition 34: The Critical Raw Materials Shaping Our Future explores the 34 raw materials deemed essential to the UK’s future. Image credit: OUMNH.

Widespread volcanic eruptions caused rapid warming during the Early Jurassic. Rhenium isotopes reveal that this led to positive climate feedbacks as higher temperatures increased weathering of organic...

In a new paper published today in Nature Geosciences, an international team of researchers, including Claudia Bertoni and Richard Walker, investigated the role these waterways had in delivering freshwater to the Mediterranean during the “Messinian Salinity Crisis”, and how tectonic activity redirected their course towards the Persian Gulf.

This study shows that over 80% of Holocene glacier advances coincide with major eruptions, suggesting explosive volcanism could trigger long-lasting cooling through feedbacks involving the ocean, sea ...

The study, led by researchers at Oxford Earth Sciences, analysed fossil remains of recent coccolithophores preserved in Atlantic Ocean sediments to reconstruct how different species respond to changing environmental conditions. The findings were published today in Nature Communications.

Associate Professor Noam Vogt-Vincent argues that it may not be too late to save our coral reefs – but it is imperative that we reach net zero as soon as possible.

Coral reefs are gravely threatened by climate change and other anthropogenic stressors. However, global coral reef collapse is not inevitable, and the status of coral reef tipping points is uncertain....

Join University of Oxford volcanologists Professor Tamsin Mather and Professor David Pyle and discover the secrets of volcanoes, as you explore their new book Think Big: The Power of Volcanoes!

Understanding volcanoes has been woven together with our understanding of the structure of the Earth. In this Expeditions video, Professor of Earth Sciences, Tamsin Mather talks about the power of…

A major grant of £1.2 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is funding Sensing the Earth with a novel QUantum-classical INterferometer array (SEQUIN), an interdisciplinary collaboration between Oxford Earth Sciences and the Many-Body Quantum Dynamics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge.

A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life emerged on Earth, revealing that many key animal groups had already evolved before the start of the Cambrian Period. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and Department of Earth Sciences as well as Yunnan University in China, has been published today in Science.