Blurs

Look at a satellite image of Earth today and it is tempting to think we understand its major landscapes. Forests occupy certain regions. Deserts occupy others. Grasslands stretch across broad areas. Ice dominates the poles. But today's Earth is only a snapshot. The planet has been through countless versions of itself. There have been periods when enormous areas that are now deserts were covered in vegetation. Forests have existed near the poles. Sea levels have risen and fallen dramatically. Glaciers have advanced across continents. Warm climates have extended much farther towards the poles. And ecosystems have appeared, expanded, fragmented and disappeared. Some of these vanished worlds were enormous. Some may have covered areas comparable to modern continents. Their plants, animals and ecological relationships were eventually transformed or destroyed. Yet the question remains: How much of Earth's ancient forest history has effectively disappeared? And could some of the ecosys...

The Burren is one of Ireland's strangest landscapes. Its vast fields of exposed limestone, broken into terraces, cracks and deep fissures, can look almost alien. Yet beneath this apparently barren stone landscape lies evidence of a very different world — one that existed hundreds of millions of years before humans, dinosaurs or even the first true reptiles appeared. Recently discovered fossils from the Burren and Donegal have revealed the remains of ancient sharks that lived approximately 330 million years ago. They weren't the sleek predators familiar from modern oceans. Some possessed strange, crushing teeth adapted to feeding on hard-shelled prey. Their fossilised remains provide a glimpse into an ancient marine ecosystem that existed long before the Atlantic Ocean took its modern form. Ireland Before Ireland Around 330 million years ago, Ireland looked nothing like it does today. The land that would eventually become Ireland was positioned much closer to the equator. Much o...

When people think of psychoactive substances, they usually think of human culture.  Yet throughout the natural world, many animals regularly interact with plants, fungi, fermented fruits, and chemical compounds that can affect behavior, perception, or physiology.  While scientists continue to debate the purpose and effects of some of these interactions, they offer a fascinating glimpse into the complex relationship between wildlife and naturally occurring chemicals. 1. Elephants and Fermented Marula Fruit African elephants are often linked to stories about consuming fermented marula fruit. While the idea of large herds becoming intoxicated remains controversial, elephants do eat fallen fruit that can undergo fermentation. The association has made them one of the most famous examples of animals interacting with naturally occurring alcohol. 2. Capuchin Monkeys and Millipede Toxins Capuchin monkeys have been observed handling and chewing certain millipedes before rubbing the secr...

When most people think of archaeology, they imagine buried cities, ancient temples or long-forgotten tombs.  Antarctica, a frozen continent covered by kilometres of ice, seems an unlikely place for archaeological discovery. Yet some of the most important clues about humanity's past—and the history of our planet—are being uncovered not from ruins, but from deep within Antarctica's ancient ice. These frozen archives contain a remarkable record stretching back hundreds of thousands of years.  By drilling deep into the Antarctic ice sheet and extracting cylindrical samples known as ice cores, scientists can effectively travel backwards through time, examining atmospheric conditions, volcanic eruptions and climate changes that occurred long before written history began. While not archaeology in the traditional sense, ice-core research functions as a form of planetary archaeology, revealing a hidden record of Earth's past preserved in layer upon layer of ancient ice. Nature's...