Self-educated ice sage James Croll cracked the conundrum of why Earth periodically freezes over. He was feted in his time, so why did the world forget him?

The planet’s largest areas of undisturbed wilderness in Siberia and tropical rainforests are under threat from huge waves of development. Here’s what it looks like

Mountainsides are becoming less stable as glaciers retreat, leading to more landslides that can trigger massive - but localised - tsunamis

The weird ‘Ediacaran’ fossils have stumped scientists for decades - now fatty molecules found inside some of them confirm they are the most ancient animals we know

The far-right winner of the first round of Brazil's presidential election wants to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement and cut down the Amazon rainforest

If big rocks fall far enough they can explode with more energy than any non-nuclear bomb – and the ensuing shockwave can snap large trees half a kilometre away

How did water survive Earth's searingly hot birth? A radical new answer turns planetary history on its head – and could revolutionise the search for alien life

A tsunami kept pinging back and forth for three days after being triggered by the 8 September 2017 Mexico earthquake, posing even more risk to human life

Exciting tales of heroic polar explorers make a great exhibition, but a book on the North Pole shows that times are too changed not to seek deeper narratives

A fossil so well preserved that its skin is still flexible is revealing much more about the marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs that swam in the sea during the age of dinosaurs

On Christmas Eve 1968, Apollo 8 became the first crewed spacecraft to circle the moon. Emerging from its dark side, one astronaut reached for his camera

If you read a book painting the very worst-case scenarios about what global warming means for human life you could easily panic. Here’s why you shouldn’t

Fossil traces hidden deep underground may solve the mystery of dark matter, the elusive substance that makes up 80 per cent of the universe

Megafloods, broken backstops and retreating ice sheets combine in a geological epic: the dramatic story of Britain's protracted original exit from Europe

Check out new books charting the state of our planet, see a movie thriller with a quantum physics twist, and launch your own robot uprising against humankind

The controversial Gaia hypothesis sees Earth as a superorganism adapted to be perfect for life. A weird type of evolution may finally show how that actually happens

The landscape of Banks Island in the far north of Canada is being reshaped by global warming-triggered land slumps, and the situation is set to get much worse

Dozens of people have died in Indonesia and Mozambique as a result of storms and flooding, possibly driven by climate change

No matter how deep we dig, life has always found a way to survive. The remarkable story of these impossible microbes can teach us about how life evolved

Through the jungle, airborne lasers have spotted ruins of long-lost ancient civilisations in Asia. Archaeologist Damian Evans reveals all.

An analysis of pollen suggests cannabis evolved on the Tibetan Plateau, not far from a cave that was frequented by our ancient Denisovan cousins

Ever since the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea, sea water has been flowing deep into the planet, causing sea levels to fall over millions of years

The magnetic north pole is racing towards Siberia - but why? It's a mystery with huge implications, and to solve it, we're building an explosive model of the planet's core

Lessons from the deep past reveal that human-induced warming could create more extreme conditions than Earth has ever experienced

Boris Johnson has become the new prime minister of the UK after winning the Conservative party leadership campaign. Here's what Johnson has said and done about climate change

We now know that past periods when Earth cooled and warmed were only regional. The finding rebuffs the myth that today's planet-wide warming is a natural blip

Earth’s continents may have been shifting for 2.5 billion years, according to a study of ancient rocks that finds plate tectonics evolved far earlier than we thought

Contrary to recent reports, new research suggests the next reversal of Earth’s magnetic pole won’t happen in a human lifetime and could take tens of thousands of years

A mini ice age that lasted 125 years started in the 6th century. Now we may have identified the volcano that kicked it all off

The Atacama Desert is one of the most hostile places on Earth, but new microbes arrive there every day on dust grains carried by the wind

Hundreds of scientifically priceless fossils are extracted in horrendous conditions in Myanmar’s amber mines and smuggled over the border for sale in China

Rivers, lakes and forests around the world are being recognised as if they were legal persons. It sounds strange, but could it effectively protect the planet?

Preserved microorganisms have been found encased in 3.5-billion-year-old rocks, confirming that single-celled life was thriving early in Earth’s history

An epic project has worked out how much carbon there is on Earth. The answer is 1.85 billion billion tonnes – and most of it is underground

Corners of unexpected planetary beauty are revealed in these stunning images on display in The Elevated Eye at Forest Lawn Museum, California

The ice shelves in eastern Antarctic peninsula seem to have been thinning since around 1700, leaving ice shelves such as Larsen B vulnerable to their recent break-up as human-caused climate change took hold

Seven Worlds, One Planet, David Attenborough’s stunning celebration of Earth’s biodiversity, prepares a new generation to save a beautiful world

A combination of cold weather and just the right amount of wave motion has caused strange frozen spheres to cover a Finnish beach

Brexit may seem important right now, but whoever wins the election will be in charge halfway to 2030 – a crucial time in efforts to limit dangerous warming, says Jacob Aron

Undersea fibre-optic cables for transmitting data can also be used to detect earthquakes and find fault lines offshore

Wondering what to read, watch and see this year? Here's our cracking cultural calendar of the most interesting non-fiction, films, games, events and sci-fi in 2020

Buildings may one day be made using a strain of bacteria that creates a concrete-like material when combined with sand and nutrients

To find subjects to photograph, Kacper Kowalski takes to the air in a paramotor or gyrocopter, barely steering to allow the wind to dictate the direction

The Permian extinction, which wiped out almost all complex life, may have been caused by the undersides of continents slipping off into Earth’s interior

Ethereal photos of life’s building blocks, Earth’s toughest creature and a close-up of a gem win Olympus Global Image of the Year Life Science Light Microscopy Award regional prizes

An aerial view of crabeater seals in Antarctica, mating damselflies and a twilight rocket launch were among the most lauded entries to the inaugural Nature TTL Photographer of the Year award

Rocks from a 3.2-billion-year-old formation in Australia show changes in the direction of their magnetism over time that suggest plate tectonics started earlier than we thought

Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of a Georgia courthouse on Friday to decry the killing of an unarmed black man in February and the delay in charging two white men in a shooting captured on video that was released earlier this week.

U.S. luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus Group said on Friday it received court approval to access $675 million of its debtor-in-possession financing, which will allow continuity of the company's business during Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and enable it to pay employees and vendors.

Australia's most populous states held back from relaxing coronavirus restrictions on Saturday although other states began allowing small gatherings and were preparing to open restaurants and shops.