A rock core from Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, has given scientists a powerful new tool to understand how catastrophic events shaped Earth’s ecosystems before the rise of the dinosaurs. The quarter-mile-long core is from an important part of the Triassic Period when life on Earth endured a series of cataclysmic events: Our planet was […]

Subduction zones — places where one tectonic plate dives beneath another — are where the world’s largest and most damaging earthquakes occur. A new study has found that when underwater mountains — also known as seamounts — are pulled into subduction zones, not only do they set the stage for these powerful quakes, but also […]