Our species likes it cold. Homo sapiens evolved in — and still inhabits — one of Earth’s rare and fragile ice ages, periods distinguished not by an abundance of saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths ...

The ancient history of Earth has always been hard to read. Most of the planet’s earliest crust has been lost, buried, or melted by geologic processes over billions of years. The rare remnants that ...

Earth is fortunate in having a magnetic field: it protects the planet and its life from harmful cosmic radiation. Other planets in our solar system—such as Mars—are constantly bombarded by charged ...

The 'Boring Billion' – a period in Earth's history between 1.8 billion and 850 million years ago – wasn't so boring after all, scientists reveal. In fact, the billion-year period paved the way for ...