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Scientists stunned: Volcano cleans up after itself by removing methane from the air

The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha'apai-volcanic eruption on 15 january 2022. Image taken from a video of the eruption. Source: Tonga Geological Services
The Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai-volcanic eruption on 15 january 2022. Image taken from a video of the eruption. Source: Tonga Geological Services

When the submarine volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai in the South Pacific erupted in January 2022, it was not only one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in modern times. The volcano also did something completely unexpected: it helped clean up some of the methane pollution it released. This phenomenon could potentially be key to how humans can slow global warming.

Using advanced satellite measurements, researchers observed unusually high concentrations of formaldehyde in the massive volcanic plume following the eruption. This was crucial evidence: when methane is destroyed in the atmosphere, formaldehyde forms as a short-lived intermediate.

“When we analysed the satellite images, we were surprised to see a cloud with a record-high concentration of formaldehyde. We were able to track the cloud for 10 days, all the way to South America. Because formaldehyde only exists for a few hours, this showed that the cloud must have been destroying methane continuously for more than a week,” explains Dr. Maarten van Herpen from Acacia Impact Innovation BV, first author of the study, which has just been published in Nature Communications.

“It is known that volcanoes emit methane during eruptions, but until now it was not known that volcanic ash is also capable of partially cleaning up this pollution,” he adds.

Salt, sunlight and new chemistry

According to the researchers, everything points to a very special process taking place—one they first discovered in 2023, but in a completely different part of the world.

They found that when dust from the Sahara is blown over the Atlantic Ocean, it mixes with sea salt from sea spray, forming small particles known as iron salt aerosols. When sunlight hits these aerosols, chlorine atoms are produced. These chlorine atoms react with methane and help break it down in the atmosphere. This discovery changed scientific understanding of tropospheric chemistry.

“What is new—and completely surprising—is that the same mechanism appears to occur in a volcanic plume high up in the stratosphere, where the physical conditions are entirely different,” says Professor Matthew Johnson from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen, one of the researchers behind both discoveries.

The 2022 eruption hurled enormous amounts of salty seawater into the stratosphere along with volcanic ash. The theory is that when sunlight hit this mixture, highly reactive chlorine was formed, helping to break down the methane released during the eruption. The visible evidence of this methane breakdown was the large amounts of formaldehyde detected in satellite images.

Methane is currently responsible for one third of global warming. Over a 20-year period, methane is about 80 times as potent as CO2. However, methane breaks down relatively quickly in the atmosphere — typically within about 10 years.

This means that if we reduce methane emissions now it could have a noticeable impact on the climate within a decade. For this reason, researchers sometimes refer to methane reduction as an “emergency brake” on climate change—one that may help prevent climate tipping points in the coming decades. However, reducing CO₂ emissions remains essential to stabilise temperatures in the long term.

Inspiration for future solutions

The researchers behind the new study believe their findings could inform a growing field working on solutions to reduce methane emissions by artificially accelerating its breakdown in the atmosphere – similar to how the volcano effectively cleaned up after itself. Various methods are currently under investigation, but a key challenge is measuring and verifying how much methane is actually removed.

“How do you prove that methane has been removed from the atmosphere? How do you know your method works? It’s very difficult. But here we address that problem by showing that methane breakdown can in fact be observed using satellites,” says Dr Jos de Laat from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, senior author of the study.

The research was conducted with the advanced TROPOMI instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite, which monitors air pollution and greenhouse gases worldwide on a daily basis.

“Retrieving formaldehyde from TROPOMI in a stratospheric volcanic plume is far outside the instrument’s standard operating conditions — we had to carefully correct the satellite’s sensitivity for the unusual altitude of the signal and account for interference from the exceptionally high sulfur dioxide concentrations. Getting these corrections right was essential to confirm that what we were seeing was real.”, said Dr. Isabelle De Smedt, Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy.

The researchers believe the new findings will inspire engineers in industry:

“It’s an obvious idea for industry to try to replicate this natural phenomenon ­— but only if it can be proven to be safe and effective. Our satellite method could offer a way to help figure out how humans might slow global warming,” concludes Matthew Johnson.

Reference:
Maarten M.J.W. van Herpen, Isabelle De Smedt, Daphne Meidan, Alfonso Saiz-Lopez, Matthew S. Johnson, Thomas Röckmann, Jos de Laat. Satellite quantification of enhanced methane oxidation applied to the stratospheric plume following Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai eruption. Nature Communications, 2026; 17 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-72191-4

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Copenhagen.

Southeast Asia’s biggest dinosaur discovered

Artistic illustration of a Natagitan. Credit: Patchanop Boonsai.
Artistic illustration of a Natagitan. Credit: Patchanop Boonsai.

A new type of long-necked plant-eating dinosaur – the largest ever found in Southeast Asia – has been revealed in a study led by researchers at UCL, Mahasarakham University, Suranaree University of Technology and Sirindhorn Museum in Thailand.

The dinosaur, described in a new paper in the journal Scientific Reports, was identified from bones found at the edge of a pond in north-eastern Thailand 10 years ago.

Analysing spine, rib, pelvis and leg bones, including a front leg bone 1.78 metres long (as long as a human), the research team estimated that the dinosaur would have weighed 27 tonnes – about the same as nine adult Asian elephants – and measured 27 metres in length.

It has been named Nagatitan chaiyaphumensis, with “Naga” referring to a mythological aquatic serpent in Thai and Southeast Asian folklore, “Titan” referring to the giants of Greek mythology and chaiyaphumensis meaning “from Chaiyaphum”, the Thai province where the fossils were discovered. It is the 14th dinosaur to be named in Thailand.

It belonged to the sauropod family of dinosaurs – long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters that included the Diplodocus and Brontosaurus – and lived in the Early Cretaceous period between 100 and 120 million years ago.

Lead author Thitiwoot (Perth) Sethapanichsakul, a Thai PhD student at UCL Earth Sciences, said: “Our dinosaur is big by most people’s standards – it likely weighed at least 10 tonnes more than Dippy the Diplodocus (Diplodocus carnegii). However, it is still dwarfed by sauropods like Patagotitan (60 tonnes) or Ruyangosaurus (50 tonnes).

“We refer to Nagatitan as ‘the last titan’ of Thailand. That is because it was discovered in Thailand’s youngest dinosaur-bearing rock formation. Younger rocks laid down towards the end of the time of the dinosaurs are unlikely to contain dinosaur remains because the region by then had become a shallow sea. So this may be the last or most recent large sauropod we will find in Southeast Asia.”

During the Early Cretaceous the environment would have been arid to semi-arid – a preferred habitat for sauropods who appeared to thrive in these environments, relying on the surface area of their long necks and tails to shed heat and regulate their body temperature.

The area where the specimens were found also appeared to be part of a meandering river system, which would have been home to fish, freshwater sharks and crocodiles.

Nagatitan would have lived alongside smaller plant-eating dinosaurs such as iguanodontians and early branching ceratopsians (cousins of the Triceratops), as well as big meat-eaters including carcharodontosaurians and spinosaurids, and flying reptiles called pterosaurs eating fish from the river.

Nagatitan was a somphospondylan sauropod – a subgroup of sauropod that became widespread about 120 million years ago. The authors found that it specifically belonged to a narrower group within the somphospondylans called Euhelopodidae, which represents a group of somphospondylan sauropods only found in Asia.

Nagatitan is distinct from other species due to a combination of unique features on its spine, pelvis and legs. A life-size reconstruction of the dinosaur is on display at the Thainosaur Museum at Asiatique in Bangkok.

Sethapanichsakul said: “My dream is to continue pushing to get Southeast Asian dinosaurs recognised internationally. More international collaborations between Thailand and other institutions like UCL can further our understanding of the region’s palaeobiology and apply it to a global context. This all starts with identifying and describing the specimens we have found first. We have a large collection of sauropod fossils that have not yet been formally described – these may include a number of new species.

“I’ve always been a dinosaur kid. This study doesn’t just establish a new species but also fulfils a childhood promise of naming a dinosaur.”

Co-author Professor Paul Upchurch, based at UCL Earth Sciences, said: “This discovery comes out of a new collaboration between UCL and colleagues in Thailand. The material was studied both in Thailand and at UCL – 3D scanning and printing has meant that we can study the specimen and collect data without having to travel (good for reducing carbon footprint).

“We have had a long-standing interest in the evolution of these gigantic plant eaters and have good collaborative links with researchers around the world. It is great to work with Thai colleagues and start to get insights into what was happening in Southeast Asia during the Jurassic and Cretaceous.”

A team of five academics work on different aspects of dinosaur evolution at UCL, with strong collaborative links to the Natural History Museum. The extended research group comprises four research fellows and postdoc researchers, and more than 10 PhD students. At least four of the PhD students are working on dinosaur evolution, with the others looking at a wider array of other evolutionary questions relating to vertebrates, including crocodiles and birds.

Project leader and National Geographic Explorer Dr Sita Manitkoon, researcher at the Palaeontological Research and Education Centre, Mahasarakham University said: “Although Thailand is a small country within Asia, we have a very high diversity in dinosaur fossils, possibly the third most abundant in Asia in terms of dinosaur remains. We’ve only really been studying dinosaurs in Thailand about 40 years (since the first dinosaur was named in 1986), and already we have a surge of younger generation palaeontologists, who are actively undertaking research and promoting palaeontology and its importance within the country.”

The new study received funding from the National Geographic Society.

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University College London.

Why meat-eating dinosaurs like T. rex evolved tiny arms

Artistic illustration of a T. rex. Credit: iStock / Orla
Artistic illustration of a T. rex. Credit: iStock / Orla

The evolution of tiny arms in several groups of meat-eating dinosaurs was likely driven by the development of strong, powerful heads, which were used to attack prey, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and Cambridge University.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, looked at data for 82 species of theropod (two-legged, mainly meat-eating dinosaurs), finding that shortening of forelimbs occurred across five groups, including tyrannosaurids, the family that included Tyrannosaurus rex.

The team, including Dr Elizabeth Steell at Cambridge and Professor Paul Upchurch at UCL, found that smaller arms were closely linked to the development of large, powerful skulls and jaws, more so than to larger overall body size, indicating that tiny arms were not just a by-product of bodies getting bigger.

The researchers suggested that the increasing size of prey, in the form of gigantic sauropods (long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters) and other large herbivores, may have resulted in a shift to hunting using jaws and head instead of claws.

Lead author Charlie Roger Scherer, a PhD student at UCL Earth Sciences, said: “Everyone knows the T. rex had tiny arms but other giant theropod dinosaurs also evolved relatively small forelimbs. The Carnotaurus had ridiculously tiny arms, smaller than the T. rex.

“We sought to understand what was driving this change and found a strong relationship between short arms and large, powerfully built heads. The head took over from the arms as the method of attack. It’s a case of ‘use it or lose it’ – the arms are no longer useful and reduce in size over time.

“These adaptations often occurred in areas with gigantic prey. Trying to pull and grab at a 100ft-long sauropod with your claws is not ideal. Attacking and holding on with the jaws might have been more effective.

“While our study identifies correlations and so cannot establish cause and effect, it is highly likely that strongly built skulls came before shorter forelimbs. It would not make evolutionary sense for it to occur the other way round, and for these predators to give up their attack mechanism without having a back-up.”

For the study, researchers developed a new way to quantify skull robustness, based on factors including how tightly connected the bones of the head were, the dimensions of the skull (a more compact shape is stronger than an elongated shape), and bite force.

On this measure, the T. rex scored highest, followed by the Tyrannotitan, a theropod nearly as massive as T. rex who lived in what is now Argentina in the Early Cretaceous period (more than 30 million years earlier than T. rex).

The team said that increasingly gigantic prey may have resulted in an “evolutionary arms race”, where theropods developed strong skulls and jaws to better subdue this prey, and in many cases grew to gigantic sizes themselves.

Separately, the team compared forelimb length to skull length, classifying five groups of dinosaurs as having reduced forelimbs: tyrannosaurids, abelisaurids, carcharodontosaurids (including the Tyrannotitan), megalosaurids and ceratosaurids.

They found reduced forelimbs had a stronger link with skull robustness than with skull size or overall body size. The secondary importance of overall body size was illustrated by the fact that some theropods with strongly built heads and tiny arms were not very large, the researchers said, citing the Majungasaurus, an apex predator in Madagascar 70 million years ago, but weighing a mere 1.6 tonnes, about a fifth of the T. rex.

The researchers noted that the forelimbs appeared to reduce in size in different ways, with hands and the lower part of the arm (past the elbow) shortening the most in abelisaurids (with late abelisaurids such as the Majungasaurus having exceptionally tiny hands). In tyrannosaurids, on the other hand, each element of the forelimb was reduced at a similar rate.

The team concluded that the same outcome (tiny forelimbs) was likely achieved through potentially different developmental pathways in different species.

A team of five academics work on different aspects of dinosaur evolution at UCL, with strong collaborative links to the Natural History Museum. The extended research group comprises four research fellows and postdoc researchers, and more than 10 PhD students. At least four of the PhD students are working on dinosaur evolution, with the others looking at a wider array of other evolutionary questions relating to vertebrates, including crocodiles and birds.

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University College London.

Atlantic island narrowly escaped ‘stealthy’ eruption

São Jorge. Credit: Ricardo Ramalho
São Jorge. Credit: Ricardo Ramalho

Thousands of earthquakes affecting Portugal’s São Jorge Island in the Azores in March 2022 were triggered by a vast sheet of magma (molten rock) rising from more than 20km below Earth’s surface and stalling just 1.6km beneath the island, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

Much of this ascent occurred with little seismic activity, with most earthquakes occurring after the magma stopped ascending. The magma rose over just a few days – there was enough of it to fill 32,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the study suggested.

Lead author Dr Stephen Hicks, based at UCL Earth Sciences, said: “This was a stealthy intrusion. Magma moved quickly through the crust, but much of its journey was silent, making it difficult to forecast whether an eruption would occur.”

For the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, an international team reconstructed the detailed underground movement of magma using seismometers on land and on the Atlantic seafloor to precisely map where earthquakes were occurring, as well as data from satellites and GPS to see how the ground moved at the time.

Satellite observations showed that the volcano’s surface rose by 6 cm, confirming that magma had entered the shallow crust. However, the intrusion stalled before reaching the surface, resulting in what scientists define as a “failed eruption”. Such intrusions help to grow islands and this study’s unprecedented sharp earthquake maps show how this happens.

The magma rose through one of the island’s main fault systems, the Pico do Carvão Fault Zone. By studying geological traces left by ancient earthquakes, scientists had previously found that this fault system has produced large earthquakes in the past. But instead of a single large earthquake, the unrest from rising magma produced many small earthquakes clustered along this fault.

The team concluded that the fault helped guide magma upward, and may also have allowed gases and fluids to escape sideways, lowering pressure in the magma and helping halt its ascent.

Lead author Dr Pablo J. González, from the Spanish National Research Council (IPNA-CSIC) in Tenerife, said: “The fault acted like both a highway and a leak. It helped magma rise, but may also have prevented an eruption.”

The findings show that large magma intrusions can occur rapidly and with limited warning, and that major geological faults can strongly influence whether magma erupts or stalls underground, key insights for improving volcanic hazard forecasting.

Dr Ricardo Ramalho, a co-author from Cardiff University, said: “This study supported local authorities in assessing a potential volcanic threat, highlighting the value of combining onshore and offshore geophysical data for accurate detection and localisation of seismic events and ground deformation.”

Professor Ana Ferreira, a co-author from UCL Earth Sciences, said: “Securing urgent NERC funding to access equipment from its Geophysical Equipment Facility (GEF), alongside additional support from Portugal, was a tremendous collective effort and a clear example of transnational cooperation between academic and civil institutions in Portugal, the UK, and Spain.”

The work was funded by research grants from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; UK), the European Research Council (ERC), Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT; Portugal), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain), and the Regional Government of the Azores, with field assistance for the offshore deployment provided by the Portuguese Navy (Marinha Portuguesa). Geophysical equipment was provided by NERC’s Geophysical Equipment Facility (GEF).

The following institutions were involved in the work: UCL, Spanish National Research Council (IPNA-CSIC), Cardiff University, University of Manchester, Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal), Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa (Portugal), University of Évora (Portugal), University of Beira Interior (Portugal), Centro de Informação e Vigilância Sismovulcânica dos Açores (CIVISA; Portugal), Research Institute for Volcanology and Risk Assessment (IVAR), University of the Azores (UAc), University of Algarve (Portugal), Instituto Português do Mar e da Atmosfera (IPMA; Portugal), AIR Centre (Portugal), C4G (Portugal).

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University College London.

Researcher helps solve mystery of clockwork-like earthquake system deep beneath the Pacific

Seismogram
Representative Image: Seismogram

Deep beneath the eastern Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles off the coast of Ecuador, a fault line on the seafloor has been generating magnitude 6 earthquakes with almost clocklike regularity for at least three decades. The earthquakes strike every five to six years, in nearly the same places, at nearly the same size.

That kind of predictability is almost unheard of in earthquake science. And for years, researchers have known the pattern existed without fully understanding why.

Now they do. In a new study published in the journal Science, scientists reveal the physical
Headshot of Assistant Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Jianhua Gong.

Assistant Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Jianhua Gong.
mechanism behind this remarkable behavior. The answer, it turns out, lies in a pair of unusual zones within the fault itself, zones that act like built-in brakes on earthquake magnitude.

“We’ve known these barriers existed for a long time, but the question has always been, what are they made of, and why do they keep stopping earthquakes so reliably, cycle after cycle?” said seismologist Jianhua Gong, lead author of the study and Assistant Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University Bloomington.

Professor Gong, with colleagues from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the U.S. Geological Survey, Boston College, the University of Delaware, Western Washington University, the University of New Hampshire, and McGill University, studied the Gofar transform fault, which sits along the East Pacific Rise off of the west coast of Ecuador, aiming to solve a 30-year mystery about why certain underwater faults produce large earthquakes like clockwork.

The Gofar fault is a long underwater trough where the Pacific and Nazca tectonic plates, two of the massive slabs of rock that make up Earth’s outer shell, grind past each other at a rate of about 140 millimeters per year, roughly the speed a fingernail grows. Transform faults are the boundaries where plates slide horizontally past each other, and the Gofar fault is one of the most studied of its kind anywhere on Earth’s seafloor.

What makes Gofar unusual is that its large earthquakes happen over and over again in the same spots, and they stop at the same spots. Between those earthquake zones lie stretches of fault that seem to absorb stress quietly, without producing major quakes. Scientists call these stretches “barriers.” But until now, nobody could fully explain what made them work.

To find out, the research team drew on data from two major ocean-floor experiments, one conducted in 2008 and another that ran from 2019 to 2022, in which scientists lowered instruments known as ocean bottom seismometers, which are earthquake detectors placed directly on the seafloor, along two separate segments of the Gofar fault. The instruments recorded tens of thousands of tiny earthquakes in the weeks and months surrounding two major magnitude 6 events, building an extraordinarily detailed picture of how the fault behaves before, during, and after a large rupture.

What the scientists found in both barrier zones was strikingly similar. In the days and weeks before each major earthquake, the barriers lit up with intense small-earthquake activity, then went almost completely quiet immediately after the big event struck. That pattern, repeated across two different fault segments 12 years apart, pointed to a common physical mechanism at work.

The barriers, the team concluded, are not simply inert stretches of rock. They are structurally complex zones where the fault splits into multiple strands, with small sideways offsets of 100 to 400 meters between them, creating areas of local extension, like a slight gap in an otherwise continuous crack.

That geometry, combined with evidence of seawater seeping deep into the fault, promotes a
Image of research team on a vessel on the ocean, deploying ocean bottom seismometers; the instruments free fall to the seafloor.

The team deploying the ocean bottom seismometers; the instruments free fall to the seafloor.
process scientists call “dilatancy strengthening;” that is, when a large earthquake rupture arrives at the barrier, the sudden movement causes the porous, fluid-saturated rock to momentarily lock up, as pore pressure, which is the pressure of fluids trapped inside the rock and opposing the rock’s confining pressure, drops sharply, effectively slamming the brakes on the rupture before it can grow larger.

“These barriers are not just passive features of the landscape,” Gong explained. “They are active, dynamic parts of the fault system, and understanding how they work changes how we think about earthquake limits on these faults.”

The Gofar fault sits far from populated coastlines, so its earthquakes pose little direct hazard to people. But the findings carry implications well beyond this one remote fault system.

Transform faults like Gofar exist all over the world’s ocean floors, and they are responsible for a puzzling feature that scientists have long noted in global earthquake records. Large underwater earthquakes tend to stay smaller than geologic conditions would seem to allow, as if some feature or process consistently puts a ceiling on their size.

The new findings suggest that barrier zones like the ones at Gofar, formed by the same combination of complex fault geometry and seawater infiltration, may be widespread across the ocean floor, acting as a global system of natural brakes that limit the maximum size of earthquakes along these boundaries.

That insight could help improve earthquake models used to assess seismic risk along underwater faults worldwide, including those near coastal population centers.

The research was funded by U.S. the National Science Foundation and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Reference:
Jianhua Gong, Wenyuan Fan, Jeffrey J. McGuire, Mark D. Behn, Jessica M. Warren, Emily Roland, Margaret S. Boettcher, John A. Collins, Yajing Liu, Christopher R. German. Predictable seismic cycles result from structural rupture barriers on oceanic transform faults. Science, 2026; 392 (6799): 718 DOI: 10.1126/science.ady6190

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Indiana University.

Ancient lost ocean may have built Central Asia’s dinosaur-era mountains

Tilted sedimentary strata in the Tian Shan, driven by the ongoing indentation of India into Asia Credit: Stijn Glorie
Tilted sedimentary strata in the Tian Shan, driven by the ongoing indentation of India into Asia
Credit: Stijn Glorie

Researchers made the discovery using a big-data approach that involved hundreds of thermal history models that have been published for Central Asia throughout three decades of research.

Creation of the landmass’s landscape is often attributed to the interplay between tectonic, climatic and mantle-related processes over the last 250 million years.

“We found that climate change and mantle processes had only little influence on the Central Asian landscape, which persisted in an arid climate for much of the last 250 million years,” said Dr Sam Boone, who was a post-doctoral researcher at Adelaide University when the research was conducted.

“Instead, the dynamics of the distant Tethys Ocean can directly be correlated with short-lived periods of mountain building in Central Asia.”

The once mighty Tethys Ocean closed during the Meso-Cenozoic period, which spans the last 250 million years. All that remains of it today is the Mediterranean Sea.

“The present-day relief of Central Asia was largely built by the India-Eurasia collision and ongoing convergence,” said co-author Associate Professor Stijn Glorie, from Adelaide University’s School of Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences.

“However, during the Cretaceous periods, dinosaurs would have seen a mountainous landscape as well, similar to the present-day Basin-and-Range Province in the western USA.

“It is thought that the extension in the Tethys, due to roll-back of subducting slabs of ocean crust, reactivated old suture zones into a series of roughly parallel ridges in Central Asia, up to thousands of kilometres away from the Himalaya collision zone.”

The thermal history models that underpin this research allowed the researchers to reveal previously untold histories of how the Earth has formed.

“These models were constructed using thermochronology methods and reveal how rocks cooled down when they are brought towards the surface during mountain uplift and subsequent erosion,” Associate Professor Glorie said.

“We analysed a compilation of thermal history models in function of plate-tectonic models for the Tethys Ocean evolution, as well as deep-time precipitation and mantle-convection models.”

Associate Professor Glorie, whose study was published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment, said the same approach could be applied to other areas of the globe.

“There are many parts on the planet where the drivers and timing for mountain building and/or rifting are poorly understood. For example, closer to home, the break-up history of Australia from Antarctica is somewhat enigmatic,” he said.

“Australia drifted away about 80 million years ago, but there is no obvious imprint of this in the thermal history record of either the Antarctic or Australian plate margins. Instead, they record much older cooling histories.

“We are applying the same approach as used in Central Asia to advance understanding of Australia-Antarctica break-up.”

Reference:
Samuel C. Boone, Stijn Glorie, Sabin Zahirovic, Angus Nixon, Fun Meeuws, Fabian Kohlmann. Deciphering mantle, tectonic and climatic drivers of exhumation. Communications Earth, 2025; 6 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s43247-025-03005-6

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Adelaide University

Understanding the Hazard Potential of the Seattle Fault Zone: It’s “Pretty Close to Home”

The modern Seattle fault zone cuts directly through the densely populated Puget lowlands, including Seattle and its metro area. Fifty million years ago, the continent tore in two here, setting the geologic stage for the modern faults, according to a new Tectonics study. Credit: Washington Geological Survey.
The modern Seattle fault zone cuts directly through the densely populated Puget lowlands, including Seattle and its metro area. Fifty million years ago, the continent tore in two here, setting the geologic stage for the modern faults, according to a new Tectonics study. Credit: Washington Geological Survey.

In the Pacific Northwest, big faults like the Cascadian subduction zone located offshore get a lot of attention. But big faults aren’t the only ones that pose significant hazards, and a new study in the journal GSA Bulletin investigates the dynamics of a complex fault zone that runs right under the heart of Seattle.

“My job as a paleoseismologist,” says Dr. Stephen Angster, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center in Seattle and lead author of the new study, “is to figure out when and how often these local faults rupture, which would help us predict roughly when we come in the window of the next potential rupture.”

The study focuses on the east–west trending Seattle Fault Zone, or SFZ, which cuts through Bainbridge Island and Seattle. Geologists have known for a while that the main fault appears to rupture on timescales greater than 5,000 years, though it’s only in recent years that geologists have begun to map out smaller secondary faults within the SFZ. However, the tools geologists use to calculate earthquake hazards don’t commonly include these smaller, secondary faults, and Angster hopes that learning more about them could help better understand their hazard potential.

“When we generate the National Seismic Hazard Model for the U.S., we leave out these shorter faults because they don’t meet the minimum requirement for length and thus are considered to have a low magnitude potential,” says Angster. “In the case of the SFZ, we don’t fully understand the rupture dynamics at depth, but they’re rupturing more frequently and pretty close to home.”

The SFZ helps accommodate strain, or deformation, that’s the result of squeezing of the Earth’s crust from Portland, Oregon, to Vancouver, British Columbia. Strain accumulates constantly but is released only periodically through earthquakes. Of the total strain in the region, the SFZ takes up about 15%. Additionally, the fact that geologists can’t directly see the faults on Earth’s surface makes it harder to study their dynamics.

Instead, Angster and his colleagues use techniques that give clues into the subsurface, such as surveys that measure small magnetic variations of the underlying bedrock. They also look for evidence of past surface-rupturing earthquakes by closely examining high-resolution lidar images, which allow them to see through the thick tree canopy and find scarps that formed when the ground was displaced during a past rupture. They then dig trenches across the scarps to determine how long ago the ruptures occurred and how large they were.

The team documented the histories of two newly discovered secondary faults in the SFZ and found that secondary faults are rupturing there about every 350 years—far more often than the main fault.

“The surface ruptures from earthquakes within the SFZ have been dominated within the last 2,500 years by these secondary fault events,” says Angster.

The most recent rupture appears to have been in the nineteenth century, according to radiocarbon and tree-ring dating of trees that died after an earthquake. Going forward, Angster and his colleagues hope to refine their understanding of these secondary faults and determine how much hazard they pose to the four million residents of the Seattle area.

“The thing about the Seattle fault is that in the Cascadia event, we’ll shake pretty hard and long when it happens,” says Angster. “But it’s likely not going to be as destructive for Seattle as a major event on the Seattle fault. I think we’re still trying to wrap our heads around the size and the potential of these smaller faults and the relationship between main fault rupture and these more frequent, smaller ruptures.”

Reference:
Stephen J. Angster, Brian L. Sherrod, Jessie K. Pearl, Lydia M. Staisch, Wes Johns, Richard J. Blakely. Latest Pleistocene to nineteenth-century earthquakes on bending-moment reverse faults of the Seattle fault zone, Washington. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 2026; DOI: 10.1130/B38333.1

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Geological Society of America. Original written by Rudy Molinek.

A massive 11,000-carat ruby has been unearthed in Myanmar’s war-scarred gemstone heartland

In this photo provided by Myanmar Military True News Information Team on Thursday, May 7, 2026, Myanmar’s newly discovered ruby is displayed at president office in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. (Myanmar Military True News Information Team via AP Photo)
In this photo provided by Myanmar Military True News Information Team on Thursday, May 7, 2026, Myanmar’s newly discovered ruby is displayed at president office in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. (Myanmar Military True News Information Team via AP Photo)

Miners in Myanmar have discovered a rare ruby of enormous size, considered to be the second-largest by weight ever found in the conflict-battered Southeast Asian nation, state media reported Friday.

The ruby, measuring 11,000 carats (2.2 kilograms, or 4.8 pounds), was unearthed near the town of Mogok, in the upper Mandalay region, the heartland of the lucrative gem-mining industry that has recently experienced intense fighting in the country’s wide-ranging civil war.

According to a report from the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar, the newly found rough ruby was discovered in mid-April, just after the traditional New Year festival.

While it weighs roughly half the weight of a 21,450-carat (4.29 kilograms, or 9.45 pounds) stone found in 1996, the new discovery is considered more valuable due to its superior color and quality. It is described as having a purplish-red hue with yellowish undertones, a high-quality color grade, moderate transparency and a highly reflective surface.

Myanmar produces as much as 90% of the world’s rubies, primarily from the areas of Mogok and Mong Hsu. Gemstones, both legitimately traded and smuggled, are a major source of revenue for Myanmar. Human rights activists and organizations such as the Britain-based research and lobbying group Global Witness have urged jewelers to stop purchasing gems sourced from Myanmar, as the industry has served as a vital revenue stream for its military governments over several decades.

A new, ostensibly civilian government was installed this year, but it followed elections described by human rights and opposition groups as a sham. The vote returned to power President Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief who led the most recent military takeover in 2021. He and his Cabinet recently examined the giant ruby at his office in the capital, Naypyitaw.

Gemstone mining also serves as a primary source of funding for ethnic armed groups fighting for autonomy, a factor that has helped fuel decades of internal conflict.

The security of these mining regions remains volatile. Mogok was captured in July 2024 by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, a guerrilla force representing the Palaung ethnic minority. Although the TNLA took over and operated the mines, control was eventually transferred back to Myanmar’s army as part of a China-mediated ceasefire agreement concluded late last year.

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by AFP.

Earth’s first continents may trace back to subduction 3.5 billion years ago

Effects of melting pressure, source oxidation, hydration, and enrichment on magmatic fO2 and H2O. Credit: Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aec1040. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec1040
Effects of melting pressure, source oxidation, hydration, and enrichment on magmatic fO2 and H2O. Credit: Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aec1040. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec1040

An international team of researchers’ analysis of minerals from the Pilbara region of Western Australia has given new insight into how ancient continents on Earth formed as far back as 3.5 billion years ago. Professor Tony Kemp, from The University of Western Australia’s School of Earth and Oceans, was a co-author of the study published in Science Advances, which was led by researchers at Nanjing University in China.

“Among scientists the formation of Earth’s early continental crust is a topic that remains debated,” Professor Kemp said. “The two competing points of view are subduction, when two tectonic plates meet and the denser one gets pushed underneath the other and sinks into Earth, and non-subduction, when hot material from deep within Earth rises upwards and melts or large meteorites impact and melt Earth’s crust.”

Researchers examined tiny crystals of the mineral zircon, contained within granitic rocks of the Pilbara Craton in northwestern Australia, which has some of the most ancient and best-preserved geological formations on Earth.

They found evidence in the crystals that indicated the magmas from which the granites formed became more oxidized and richer in water over time, from 3.5 billion years ago to 3.2 billion years ago.

“For this finding to be true, a mechanism must have existed on early Earth to transport water into the deep crust and mantle,” Professor Kemp said. “On modern Earth, this is achieved along the boundaries of tectonic plates through subduction—as one plate sinks beneath the other—a process unique to Earth and responsible for forming continents.”

The findings underscore the role of subduction-driven water recycling in the origin of continental crust. “Our study implies that a very early form of plate subduction existed on Earth as far back as 3.5 billion years ago and could have had a role in the growth of ancient continents,” Professor Kemp said.

Reference:
Di Zhou et al, Paleoarchean deep crustal hydration and oxidation induced by subduction-driven water recycling, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aec1040.

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Western Australia.

‘Dolomite Problem’: 200-year-old geology mystery resolved

Professor Wenhao Sun shows off dolomite from his personal rock collection. Sun studies crystal growth of minerals from a materials science perspective. By understanding how atoms come together to form natural minerals, he believes we can reveal fundamental mechanisms of crystal growth, which can be used to make functional materials more quickly and efficiently. Image credit: Marcin Szczepanski, Lead Multimedia Storyteller, Michigan Engineering.
Professor Wenhao Sun shows off dolomite from his personal rock collection. Sun studies crystal growth of minerals from a materials science perspective. By understanding how atoms come together to form natural minerals, he believes we can reveal fundamental mechanisms of crystal growth, which can be used to make functional materials more quickly and efficiently. Image credit: Marcin Szczepanski, Lead Multimedia Storyteller, Michigan Engineering.

For more than two centuries, scientists tried and failed to grow dolomite in the lab under conditions thought to match how it forms in nature. A recent study has finally changed that. Researchers from the University of Michigan and Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan succeeded by developing a new theory based on detailed atomic simulations.

Their work solves a long-standing geological puzzle known as the “Dolomite Problem.” Dolomite is a widespread mineral found in iconic locations such as the Dolomite mountains in Italy, Niagara Falls and Utah’s Hoodoos. It is abundant in rocks older than 100 million years, yet it is rarely seen forming in more recent environments.

“If we understand how dolomite grows in nature, we might learn new strategies to promote the crystal growth of modern technological materials,” said Wenhao Sun, the Dow Early Career Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at U-M and the corresponding author of the paper published in Science.

Why Dolomite Growth Is So Slow

The key breakthrough came from understanding what disrupts dolomite as it forms. In water, minerals typically grow as atoms attach in an orderly way to the surface of a crystal. Dolomite behaves differently because its structure is made of alternating layers of calcium and magnesium.

As the crystal grows, these two elements often attach randomly instead of lining up correctly. This creates structural defects that block further growth. The result is an extremely slow process. At that rate, forming a single well-ordered layer of dolomite could take up to 10 million years.

Nature’s Built-In Reset Mechanism

The researchers realized that these defects are not permanent. Atoms that are out of place are less stable and more likely to dissolve when exposed to water. In natural environments, cycles such as rainfall or tidal changes repeatedly wash away these flawed areas.

Over time, this process clears the surface so new, properly arranged layers can form. Instead of taking millions of years for a single layer, dolomite can gradually build up in far shorter intervals. Over long geological periods, this leads to the large deposits seen in ancient rock formations.

Simulating Crystal Growth at the Atomic Level

To test their idea, the team needed to model how atoms interact as dolomite forms. This requires calculating the energy involved in countless interactions between electrons and atoms, which is usually extremely demanding in terms of computing power.

Researchers at U-M’s Predictive Structure Materials Science (PRISMS) Center developed software that simplifies this challenge. It calculates the energy for certain atomic arrangements and then predicts others based on the symmetry of the crystal structure.

“Our software calculates the energy for some atomic arrangements, then extrapolates to predict the energies for other arrangements based on the symmetry of the crystal structure,” said Brian Puchala, one of the software’s lead developers and an associate research scientist in U-M’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

This approach made it possible to simulate dolomite growth over timescales that reflect real geological processes.

“Each atomic step would normally take over 5,000 CPU hours on a supercomputer. Now, we can do the same calculation in 2 milliseconds on a desktop,” said Joonsoo Kim, a doctoral student of materials science and engineering and the study’s first author.

Lab Experiment Confirms the Theory

Natural settings where dolomite still forms today often experience cycles of flooding followed by drying, which supports the team’s theory. However, direct experimental evidence was still needed.

That evidence came from Yuki Kimura, a professor of materials science at Hokkaido University, and Tomoya Yamazaki, a postdoctoral researcher in his lab. They used an unusual property of transmission electron microscopes to recreate the process.

“Electron microscopes usually use electron beams just to image samples,” Kimura said. “However, the beam can also split water, which makes acid that can cause crystals to dissolve. Usually this is bad for imaging, but in this case, dissolution is exactly what we wanted.”

The team placed a small dolomite crystal in a solution containing calcium and magnesium. They then pulsed the electron beam 4,000 times over two hours, repeatedly dissolving the defects as they formed.

After this process, the crystal grew to about 100 nanometers, or roughly 250,000 times smaller than an inch. That growth represented around 300 layers of dolomite. Previous experiments had never produced more than five layers.

Implications for Modern Technology

Solving the Dolomite Problem does more than explain a geological mystery. It also offers insight into how to control crystal growth in advanced materials used in modern technology.

“In the past, crystal growers who wanted to make materials without defects would try to grow them really slowly,” Sun said. “Our theory shows that you can grow defect-free materials quickly, if you periodically dissolve the defects away during growth.”

This concept could help improve the production of semiconductors, solar panels, batteries and other high-performance technologies.

The research was funded by the American Chemical Society PRF New Doctoral Investigator grant, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.

Reference:
Joonsoo Kim, Yuki Kimura, Brian Puchala, Tomoya Yamazaki, Udo Becker, Wenhao Sun. Dissolution enables dolomite crystal growth near ambient conditions. Science, 2023; 382 (6673): 915 DOI: 10.1126/science.adi3690

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

Major river deltas are sinking faster than sea-level rise

The mouth of the Mississippi River in south Louisiana. The delta of the Mississippi is sinking faster than local sea-level rise rates. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.
The mouth of the Mississippi River in south Louisiana. The delta of the Mississippi is sinking faster than local sea-level rise rates. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.

A new study published in Nature finds that many of the world’s largest river deltas are subsiding more quickly than global sea levels are rising, putting hundreds of millions of people at potential risk.

The primary drivers behind this trend include intensive groundwater extraction, a decline in sediment carried by rivers, and rapid urban development.

Global Mapping Reveals Widespread Delta Sinking

This research offers the first detailed, high-resolution analysis of elevation loss across 40 river deltas around the world. The project was led by Leonard Ohenhen, a former Virginia Tech graduate student who is now an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine. The work was overseen by Virginia Tech geoscientists Manoochehr Shirzaei and Susanna Werth.

Results show that almost every delta studied contains areas where the land is dropping faster than nearby sea levels are rising. In 18 of the 40 deltas, this downward movement, known as subsidence, already exceeds local sea-level rise. That trend is increasing near-term flood risk for more than 236 million people.

Satellite Data Tracks Elevation Loss Across Continents

Researchers used advanced satellite radar systems to measure changes in surface elevation across deltas on five continents. The resulting high-resolution maps capture changes at a scale of 75 square meters per pixel, allowing scientists to detect localized patterns of sinking.

Several major deltas are experiencing especially rapid elevation loss, including those of the Mekong, Nile, Chao Phraya, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Mississippi, and Yellow rivers.

“In many places, groundwater extraction, sediment starvation, and rapid urbanization are causing land to sink much faster than previously recognized,” Ohenhen said.

In some areas, the rate of sinking is more than double the current global pace of sea-level rise.

Human Activity Driving Accelerated Subsidence

“Our results show that subsidence isn’t a distant future problem — it is happening now, at scales that exceed climate-driven sea-level rise in many deltas,” said Shirzaei, co-author and director of Virginia Tech’s Earth Observation and Innovation Lab.

The study identifies groundwater depletion as the strongest overall factor linked to delta subsidence, although the main cause varies by region.

“When groundwater is over-pumped or sediments fail to reach the coast, the land surface drops,” said Werth, who co-led the groundwater analysis. “These processes are directly linked to human decisions, which means the solutions also lie within our control.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and NASA.

Reference:
L. O. Ohenhen, M. Shirzaei, J. L. Davis, A. Tiwari, R. Nicholls, O. Dasho, N. Sadhasivam, K. Seeger, S. Werth, A. J. Chadwick, F. Onyike, J. Lucy, C. Atkins, S. Daramola, A. Ankamah, P. S. J. Minderhoud, J. Oelsmann, G. C. Yemele. Global subsidence of river deltas. Nature, 2026; 649 (8098): 894 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09928-6

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Virginia Tech.

New ice core studies expand histories of greenhouse gases and ocean temperature to 3 million years

Bubbles trapped in ancient Antarctic ice.
Bubbles trapped in ancient Antarctic ice.

Scientists studying ancient Antarctic ice are uncovering new details about how Earth’s climate has changed over the past 3 million years. By analyzing both the ice and the tiny pockets of air trapped inside it, researchers are building a longer and more complete record of past climate conditions.

Two new studies published in the journal Nature reveal a surprising pattern. While the planet gradually cooled over this time, levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere declined only slightly.

A Long-Standing Climate Mystery

For more than a century, scientists have known that Earth was significantly warmer about 3 million years ago. Evidence includes fossils of temperate and subtropical forests found in places like Alaska and Greenland, as well as ancient shorelines along the U.S. East Coast from Georgia to Virginia, showing that sea levels were much higher.

However, the reason behind this warm period and the cooling that followed has remained unclear. One major challenge has been the difficulty of accurately reconstructing both global temperatures and greenhouse gas levels from so far back in time.

Searching for the Oldest Ice in Antarctica

The new research comes from the National Science Foundation Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, known as COLDEX, a collaborative effort led by Oregon State University. The team focuses on locating and analyzing some of the oldest ice on Earth.

The studies were led by Julia Marks-Peterson, a doctoral student at OSU, and Sarah Shackleton, who conducted the work as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and is now a professor at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. They examined ancient ice recovered from Allan Hills, a unique region along the edge of the East Antarctic ice sheet.

Unlike typical ice core sites, Allan Hills contains ice that has been pushed up and distorted by movement within the ice sheet. This disrupts the original layering, so instead of a continuous timeline, researchers get “snapshots” of climate conditions from different points in the past.

“Those snapshots extend climate records from ice much further than previously possible,” said COLDEX Director Ed Brook, a paleoclimatologist in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. “These longer records are also now raising new questions about Earth’s climate evolution and how far back in time we might be able to go with ice core data.”

Ocean Cooling Revealed by Trapped Gases

One study used measurements of noble gases preserved in the trapped air bubbles to estimate changes in ocean temperature over time. These gases provide a global signal of ocean conditions.

The results show that average ocean temperatures have dropped by about 2 to 2.5 degrees Celsius over the past 3 million years. While earlier research has documented cooling at the ocean surface, this study found that the timing of cooling differed between surface waters and deeper layers.

“The noble gases in ice provide a unique way to look at ocean temperature change,” Shackleton said. “Other methods can give you information about ocean temperature at a single site, but this gives a more global view.”

Much of the overall cooling occurred early, beginning around 3 million years ago and continuing for about 1 million years. This period coincides with the formation of large ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. In contrast, surface ocean temperatures declined more gradually until about 1 million years ago. Researchers suggest this difference may be linked to changes in how heat moves between the ocean’s surface and its depths.

Greenhouse Gas Levels Show Only Modest Change

Using the same ice samples, Marks-Peterson and her team produced the first direct measurements of carbon dioxide and methane levels spanning the past 3 million years.

Their findings indicate that carbon dioxide levels generally stayed below 300 parts per million during this period. Around 2.7 million years ago, levels were about 250 parts per million and then decreased slightly by roughly 20 parts per million by 1 million years ago. Methane levels remained steady at about 500 parts per billion.

Some earlier estimates based on ancient sediments suggested higher carbon dioxide levels, but results have varied. This highlights the importance of extending ice core records further back in time to improve accuracy.

In contrast, greenhouse gas levels today are much higher. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, carbon dioxide averaged 425 parts per million in 2025, while methane reached 1,935 parts per billion.

More Than Greenhouse Gases Shaped Earth’s Climate

The findings suggest that greenhouse gases alone do not fully explain the long-term cooling trend. Other factors likely played significant roles, including changes in Earth’s reflectivity, shifts in vegetation and ice coverage, and variations in ocean circulation.

“Our hope is that this work will refine our view of past warmer climates and sharpen our understanding of how different elements of the Earth system interact,” said Marks-Peterson.

Even Older Ice May Hold More Answers

The research is already leading to new questions. Scientists involved in COLDEX are continuing to explore older ice samples to push the climate record even further back.

Researchers have recently identified ice that may be as old as 6 million years at the base of one core and are now analyzing these samples. New drilling efforts are also underway to locate additional ancient ice.

Scientists are working to improve methods for reconstructing carbon dioxide levels, studying other gases trapped in the ice, and better understanding how very old ice is preserved. These efforts could help identify new sites for future drilling and further expand the record of Earth’s climate history.

COLDEX is supported by the NSF Office of Polar Programs; the Science and Technology Center Program at the NSF Office of Integrative Activities; and Oregon State University. Fieldwork in Antarctica is supported by the U.S. Antarctic Program and funded by NSF. Ice drilling support is provided by the NSF U.S. Ice Drilling Program and ice sample curation by the NSF Ice Core Facility in Denver, Colorado.

Reference:
Julia Marks-Peterson, Sarah Shackleton, John Higgins, Jeffrey Severinghaus, Yuzhen Yan, Christo Buizert, Michael Kalk, Ross Beaudette, Valens Hishamunda, Demetria Eves, Austin Carter, Andrei Kurbatov, Jenna Epifanio, Jacob Morgan, Ian Nesbitt, Michael Bender, Edward Brook. Broadly stable atmospheric CO2 and CH4 levels over the past 3 million years. Nature, 2026; 651 (8106): 647 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-10032-y

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Oregon State University. Original written by Michelle Klampe.

Scientists just discovered Africa is closer to breaking apart than we thought

Homo erectus crania from the Turkana Rift. Left: WT 15000, ‘Turkana Boy’ from West Turkana. Right: ER 3733 from East Turkana. Photo: John Rowan
Homo erectus crania from the Turkana Rift. Left: WT 15000, ‘Turkana Boy’ from West Turkana. Right: ER 3733 from East Turkana. Photo: John Rowan

Eastern Africa’s Turkana Rift is known both for its rich record of early human fossils and for intense volcanic activity driven by shifting tectonic plates. Now, scientists report that the crust beneath this region has thinned far more than previously understood, pointing to the long term breakup of the African continent and offering a fresh explanation for why so many ancient human remains were preserved there.

The findings were published in Nature Communications.

A Vast Rift Shaped by Moving Tectonic Plates

The Turkana Rift stretches roughly 500 kilometers across Kenya and Ethiopia and forms part of the larger East African Rift System. This massive system extends from the Afar Depression in northeastern Ethiopia all the way to Mozambique, separating the African tectonic plate from the Arabian and Somali plates. In the Turkana region, the African and Somali plates are slowly moving apart at about 4.7 millimeters per year.

As this separation occurs, a process called rifting stretches the crust sideways. The strain causes the surface to buckle and crack, allowing magma from deep within Earth to rise upward.

Not all rifts go on to split continents completely. In this case, however, the Turkana Rift appears to be on that path.

Scientists Detect Unexpectedly Thin Crust

“We found that rifting in this zone is more advanced, and the crust is thinner, than anyone had recognized,” says study lead author Christian Rowan, a Ph.D. student at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School. “Eastern Africa has progressed further in the rifting process than previously thought.”

To reach this conclusion, Rowan and colleagues analyzed a rare set of high quality seismic data collected with industry partners and in collaboration with the Turkana Basin Institute, founded by the late paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. By examining how sound waves traveled through underground layers and combining those results with other imaging methods, the team mapped sediment structures and determined the depth of the crust beneath the rift.

Along the center of the rift, the crust is only about 13 kilometers thick. Farther away, it exceeds 35 kilometers. This dramatic difference points to a process known as “necking.”

“Necking” Signals a Critical Tectonic Phase

The term describes how the crust stretches and thins in the middle, similar to the narrowed “neck” that forms when a piece of saltwater taffy is pulled apart. As the crust becomes thinner, it also becomes weaker, making it easier for rifting to continue.

“The thinner the crust gets, the weaker it becomes, which helps promote continued rifting,” Rowan says. Eventually, the crust can break completely.

“We’ve reached that critical threshold” of crustal breakdown,” says Anne Bécel, a geophysicist at Lamont and co-author of the study. “We think this is why it is more prone to separate.”

Even so, these changes unfold over immense timescales. The Turkana Rift began opening about 45 million years ago, and researchers estimate that necking started after widespread volcanic eruptions around 4 million years ago. It may take several million more years before the next phase, known as oceanization, begins. At that stage, magma will rise through the fractures to form new seafloor, and water from the Indian Ocean to the north could eventually flood in.

Evidence of Earlier Failed Rifting

The team also uncovered signs of an earlier rifting episode that did not lead to a full continental split. Instead, it left the crust thinner and weaker, setting the stage for the current phase of activity.

“It challenges some of the more traditional ideas of how continents break apart,” says Rowan.

Because the Turkana Rift is the first known active continental rift currently undergoing necking, it offers scientists a rare chance to study this crucial stage of tectonic evolution.

“In essence, we now have a front row seat to observe a critical rifting phase that had fundamentally shaped all rifted margins across the world,” says co-author Folarin Kolawole, who is also with Lamont. These processes are closely linked to other Earth systems, helping researchers reconstruct past landscapes, vegetation, and climate patterns. “Then we can use that knowledge to understand what’s going to happen in our future, even on shorter time scales,” says Bécel.

Rethinking the Fossil Record of Human Evolution

The discoveries also shed new light on the region’s extraordinary fossil record. The Turkana Rift has produced more than 1,200 hominin fossils from the past 4 million years, accounting for about one third of all such finds in Africa. Many scientists have long viewed this area as a key center of human evolution.

Rowan and colleagues suggest another possibility.

After widespread volcanic activity about 4 million years ago, the onset of necking caused the land in the rift to sink. This subsidence created conditions where fine grained sediments accumulated quickly, which are ideal for preserving fossils.

“The conditions were right to preserve a continuous fossil record,” says Rowan.

This means the Turkana Rift may not have been uniquely important as a site where human ancestors evolved, but rather a place where geological conditions made it easier to record their history.

That idea remains a hypothesis, but it opens new avenues for research. “But other researchers can now use our results to explore those ideas,” says Rowan. “In addition, our results can be fed into tectonic models that are coupled with climate to really explore how shifting tectonics and climates influenced our evolution.”

The research team also includes Paul Betka from Western Washington University and John Rowan from the University of Cambridge.

Reference:
Christian M. Rowan, Folarin Kolawole, Anne Bécel, Paul Betka, John Rowan. Necking of the active Turkana Rift Zone and the priming of eastern Africa for continental breakup. Nature Communications, 2026; 17 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-71663-x

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Columbia Climate School.

Earth is splitting open beneath the Pacific Northwest

The northern end of the Cascadia subduction zone, where the Juan de Fuca (JdF) and Explorer (Exp) plates slowly move beneath the North American plate, is gradually shutting down piece by piece, with small pieces of the plate breaking off while the remaining plate continues to subduct until the next tear occurs.
The northern end of the Cascadia subduction zone, where the Juan de Fuca (JdF) and Explorer (Exp) plates slowly move beneath the North American plate, is gradually shutting down piece by piece, with small pieces of the plate breaking off while the remaining plate continues to subduct until the next tear occurs.

Scientists have, for the first time, clearly captured a subduction zone in the act of breaking apart. These zones form where one tectonic plate sinks beneath another, and they are responsible for some of the most powerful geological events on Earth. The new findings, published in Science Advances, offer a rare look at how these massive systems evolve and raise new questions about earthquake risks in the Pacific Northwest.

Subduction zones shape the planet in dramatic ways. They move continents, trigger major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and pull old crust deep into Earth’s mantle. Yet despite their immense power, they do not last forever.

Why Subduction Zones Eventually Fail

If subduction zones continued indefinitely, continents would keep piling up, oceans would disappear, and much of Earth’s geological history would be erased. Scientists have long wondered what causes these systems to shut down.

“Getting a subduction zone started is like trying to push a train uphill — it takes a huge effort,” said Brandon Shuck, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University and lead author of the study. “But once it’s moving, it’s like the train is racing downhill, impossible to stop. Ending it requires something dramatic — basically, a train wreck.” Shuck conducted the research while he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is part of the Columbia Climate School.

Cascadia Reveals a Tectonic Plate Tearing Apart

The answer appears to lie off the coast of Vancouver Island, in the Cascadia region. Here, the Juan de Fuca and Explorer plates are slowly sliding beneath the North American plate. Using advanced imaging techniques and earthquake data, scientists have now seen this subduction zone starting to come apart.

The team relied on seismic reflection imaging, which works much like an ultrasound of the Earth’s interior, combined with detailed records of earthquakes. Together, these tools revealed a plate that is not simply sinking, but actively tearing.

Inside the 2021 Seismic Imaging Experiment

The data came from the 2021 Cascadia Seismic Imaging Experiment (CASIE21), conducted aboard the research vessel Marcus G. Langseth. Led by Lamont scientist Suzanne Carbotte, with co-author Anne Bécel, the team sent sound waves into the seafloor and captured their echoes using a 15-kilometer-long array of underwater sensors.

This method produced highly detailed images of faults and fractures deep beneath the ocean floor. Those images clearly show sections of the plate breaking apart.

“This is the first time we have a clear picture of a subduction zone caught in the act of dying,” said Shuck. “Rather than shutting down all at once, the plate is ripping apart piece by piece, creating smaller microplates and new boundaries. So instead of a big train wreck, it’s like watching a train slowly derail, one car at a time.”

Carbotte noted that scientists have long known that subduction can slow or stall when lighter parts of a plate reach the boundary. “But we haven’t previously had such a clear picture of the process in action,” she says. “These new findings help us better understand the life cycle of the tectonic plates that shape the Earth.”

Massive Faults and Silent Gaps

Researchers identified several large tears cutting through the Juan de Fuca plate, including one major fault where the plate has dropped by about five kilometers. “There’s a very large fault that’s actively breaking the [subducting] plate,” Shuck explained. “It’s not 100% torn off yet, but it’s close.”

Earthquake data supports this picture. Along a 75-kilometer-long tear, some areas are still producing earthquakes while others are unusually quiet. “Once a piece has completely broken off, it no longer produces earthquakes because the rocks aren’t stuck together anymore,” he said. These quiet gaps suggest that parts of the plate have already separated and that the break is gradually expanding.

A Slow, Piece-by-Piece Breakdown

The study shows that subduction zones do not fail all at once. Instead, they shut down through a process known as “episodic” or “piecewise” termination. The plate tears apart in stages, with different sections breaking off over time.

As smaller pieces detach, the larger plate loses the force pulling it downward. Over millions of years, this gradual loss of momentum can bring the entire subduction system to a stop.

Clues to Earth’s Geological Past

This step-by-step breakup helps explain puzzling features seen elsewhere on Earth. In some regions, scientists have found fragments of old tectonic plates and bursts of volcanic activity that did not fully make sense before.

One example lies off Baja California, where remnants of the ancient Farallon plate remain as fossil microplates. For years, researchers suspected these fragments were linked to dying subduction zones, but the exact process was unclear. The new observations from Cascadia suggest that these ancient plates likely broke apart in the same gradual way.

What This Means for Earthquakes in Cascadia

Scientists are now investigating how these newly discovered tears might influence future earthquakes. One key question is whether a major rupture could travel across these breaks or if the fractures might change how seismic energy spreads.

For now, the findings do not significantly alter the overall risk in the Cascadia region. The area is still capable of producing very large earthquakes and tsunamis. However, incorporating these new details into models will improve how researchers understand and simulate seismic hazards in the Pacific Northwest.

Reference:
Brandon Shuck, Brian Boston, Suzanne M. Carbotte, Shuoshuo Han, Anne Bécel, Nathaniel C. Miller, J. Pablo Canales, Jesse Hutchinson, Reid Merrill, Jeffrey Beeson, Pinar Gurun, Geena Littel, Mladen R. Nedimović, Genevieve Savard, Harold Tobin. Slab tearing and segmented subduction termination driven by transform tectonics. Science Advances, 2025; 11 (39) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ady8347

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Columbia Climate School.

Twin threat: Cascadia and San Andreas faults may be seismically linked

San Andreas Fault
Aerial photo of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain, northwest of Los Angeles.
Credit: Wikipedia.

Two major fault systems along North America’s West Coast, the Cascadia subduction zone and the San Andreas fault, may be more closely connected than previously believed. A new study suggests that activity on one fault could trigger earthquakes on the other, raising the possibility of closely timed seismic events.

“We’re used to hearing the ‘Big One’ — Cascadia — being this catastrophic huge thing,” said Chris Goldfinger, a marine geologist at Oregon State University and lead author of the study. “It turns out it’s not the worst case scenario.”

Deep-Sea Evidence Reveals a Hidden Pattern

To investigate this possibility, Goldfinger and his colleagues examined sediment cores taken from the ocean floor. These cores preserve about 3,100 years of geological history. The team focused on turbidites, which are layers of sediment left behind by underwater landslides that are often triggered by earthquakes.

By comparing turbidite layers from areas influenced by both fault systems, the researchers identified similarities in their structure and timing. These patterns point to a potential synchronization between Cascadia and the northern San Andreas fault.

Pinpointing the exact timing between earthquakes on the two faults is challenging. However, Goldfinger noted three cases within the past 1,500 years, including the most recent event in 1700, where the data suggests the earthquakes occurred within minutes to hours of each other.

A Larger Disaster Scenario

This possible connection has major implications for earthquake preparedness.

“We could expect that an earthquake on one of the faults alone would draw down the resources of the whole country to respond to it,” Goldfinger said. “And if they both went off together, then you’ve got potentially San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver all in an emergency situation in a compressed timeframe.”

Scientists have long considered the idea that faults might interact in this way, but real-world evidence has been scarce. The only documented example occurred in Sumatra, where two large earthquakes struck three months apart in 2004 and 2005.

A Chance Discovery Leads to a Breakthrough

Goldfinger’s interest in this question goes back decades, including a key moment during a 1999 research cruise. While collecting sediment cores from the Cascadia subduction zone off Oregon and northern California, the team accidentally drifted off course. They ended up about 55 miles south of Cape Mendocino in California, within the San Andreas fault zone.

Instead of abandoning the location, the researchers decided to collect a core there as well. What they found turned out to be highly unusual.

“Doublets” Point to Back-to-Back Earthquakes

Under normal conditions, turbidites show a consistent pattern, with coarse material settling at the bottom and finer sediment layering on top. In this unexpected core, the pattern was reversed. Coarse, sandy material sat above finer, silty sediment.

This unusual structure suggested a two-step process. The lower, finer layer likely formed first during a major Cascadia earthquake. The coarser material on top appeared to result from a subsequent event along the nearby San Andreas fault.

To confirm this idea, the team used radiocarbon dating on this core and others collected near Cape Mendocino, where the two fault systems meet. The results supported the idea that these reversed layers, which the researchers call “doublets,” were created by earthquakes occurring close together in time, rather than aftershocks or unrelated events.

Researchers and Collaboration

The study also included contributions from Ann Morey, Christopher Romsos and Bran Black of Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences; Jeff Beeson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Oregon State; Maureen Walzcak, University of Washington; Alexis Vizcaino, Springer Nature Group in Germany; Jason Patton, California Department of Conservation; and C. Hans Nelson and Julia Gutiérrez-Pastor, Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra in Spain.

Reference:
C. Goldfinger, J. Beeson, B. Black, A. Vizcaino, C.H. Nelson, A. Morey, J.R. Patton, J. Gutiérrez-Pastor, C. Romsos, M.D. Walzcak. Unravelling the dance of earthquakes: Evidence of partial synchronization of the northern San Andreas fault and Cascadia megathrust. Geosphere, 2025; 21 (6): 1132 DOI: 10.1130/GES02857.1

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Oregon State University.

A rare fossil reveals that Earth’s earliest sponges were hiding in plain sight too soft to leave a trace.

Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and collaborators reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling in a gap in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals. Photo by Spencer Coppage for Virginia Tech.
Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and collaborators reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling in a gap in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals. Photo by Spencer Coppage for Virginia Tech.

At first glance, sea sponges seem almost too simple to be mysterious.

They have no brain and no gut, and scientists have long believed they originated around 700 million years ago. Yet clear fossil evidence only dates back to about 540 million years ago, leaving a puzzling 160 million-year gap in the record.

A Fossil From the “Lost Years”

In a study published in the journal Nature, Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and his collaborators describe a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil that falls squarely within this missing interval. The team also proposes a key explanation for the gap: the earliest sponges may not have had mineral skeletons, making them far less likely to fossilize.

This idea helps resolve a long-standing paradox in evolutionary science.

The Mystery of Missing Sponge Fossils

Scientists have used molecular clock estimates, which track the accumulation of genetic mutations over time, to suggest that sponges first evolved around 700 million years ago. However, rocks from that era have not yielded convincing sponge fossils.

This disconnect has fueled years of debate among zoologists and paleontologists.

The new discovery helps bridge that divide. It adds an important piece to the evolutionary history of one of Earth’s earliest animals and offers an explanation for why older fossils have been so difficult to find. It also connects back to questions first raised by Darwin about when early animal life emerged.

A Surprising Discovery Along the Yangtze River

Xiao first encountered the fossil about five years ago when a collaborator sent him a photo of a specimen uncovered along the Yangtze River in China.

“I had never seen anything like it before,” said Xiao, a faculty member in the College of Science. “Almost immediately, I realized that it was something new.”

Working with researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Xiao began testing different possibilities. The fossil did not match known features of sea squirts, sea anemones, or corals. That left one intriguing possibility: an ancient sea sponge.

Why Early Sponges Rarely Fossilized

In earlier work published in 2019, Xiao and his team suggested that the first sponges may not have produced the hard, needle-like structures called spicules that define modern sponges.

By examining the fossil record, the researchers found that sponge spicules become more mineralized over time. The further back they looked, the more organic and less mineral-based these structures appeared.

“If you extrapolate back, then perhaps the first ones were soft-bodied creatures with entirely organic skeletons and no minerals at all,” Xiao said. “If this was true, they wouldn’t survive fossilization except under very special circumstances where rapid fossilization outcompeted degradation.”

Later in 2019, the team identified such a rare case. They found a sponge fossil preserved in a thin layer of marine carbonate rock known for capturing soft-bodied organisms, including some of the earliest animals capable of movement.

“Most often, this type of fossil would be lost to the fossil record,” Xiao said. “The new finding offers a window into early animals before they developed hard parts.”

A Unique Pattern and Unexpected Size

The newly described fossil stands out for its detailed surface pattern. It is covered in a grid of regular box-like shapes, each subdivided into smaller, repeating units.

“This specific pattern suggests our fossilized sea sponge is most closely related to a certain species of glass sponge,” said Xiaopeng Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology and the University of Cambridge.

Its size also surprised researchers.

“When searching for fossils of early sponges I had expected them to be very small,” said Alex Liu, a collaborator from the University of Cambridge. “The new fossil is about 15 inches long with a relatively complex, conical body plan, which challenged many of our expectations for the appearance of early sponges.”

Rethinking the Search for Early Animal Life

This discovery not only helps fill part of the missing fossil record but also changes how scientists search for early life.

If the first sponges were soft-bodied and lacked mineral skeletons, many may have disappeared without leaving a trace. That means researchers need to look beyond traditional fossil clues and focus on rare conditions where delicate organisms could be preserved.

“The discovery indicates that perhaps the first sponges were spongy but not glassy,” Xiao said. “We now know that we need to broaden our view when looking for early sponges.”

Reference:
Xiaopeng Wang, Alexander G. Liu, Zhe Chen, Chengxi Wu, Yarong Liu, Bin Wan, Ke Pang, Chuanming Zhou, Xunlai Yuan, Shuhai Xiao. A late-Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal. Nature, 2024; 630 (8018): 905 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07520-y

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Virginia Tech.

Masripithecus: A new Miocene ape from Egypt sheds light on the origins of modern apes

Reconstruction of Masripithecus moghraensis by Mauricio Antón.Credit: Copyrights belong to Professor Hesham Sallam
Reconstruction of Masripithecus moghraensis by Mauricio Antón.
Credit: Copyrights belong to Professor Hesham Sallam

In a study to be published in Science on [3/26/2026], an international research team from the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (Egypt) and the University of Southern California (USA) describe Masripithecus moghraensis, a newly identified fossil ape that lived around 17–18 million years ago, during the Early Miocene. Recovered from the Wadi Moghra fossil site in northern Egypt, the remains represent the first definitive fossil ape known from North Africa. The finding not only extends the geographic range of early apes, but also places Egypt—and the wider Middle East region—at the heart of a pivotal evolutionary transition leading to modern apes.

Hesham Sallam, a paleontologist at Mansoura University, Egypt, and senior author of the study, said, “We spent five years searching for this kind of fossil because, when we look closely at the early ape family tree, it becomes clear that something is missing—and North Africa holds that missing piece.”

Previously, Early Miocene sites in North Africa had yielded fossils of monkeys, but not apes. As a result, early apes and their close relatives were thought to be confined largely to more southern parts of Africa during this period. Geologically younger ape fossils have been reported from Africa, Asia, and Europe, but their relationships and geographic roots are actively debated. Now it appears likely that this uneven fossil record obscured our understanding of the origin of crown Hominoidea—the group that includes all living apes, from gibbons and orangutans to gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans, along with their last common ancestor.

The discovery of Masripithecus not only reveals that apes were present in North Africa during this time period, but also that the new species was quite distinct from similar-aged species in East Africa. The genus name Masripithecus combines Masr (مصر), the Arabic word for Egypt, with the Greek píthēkos, meaning ape. The species name refers to Wadi Moghra, a well-known fossil locality in northern Egypt, where the remains were recovered during fieldwork by the Sallam Lab team in 2023 and 2024.

Although the new fossil material is limited to the lower jaw, it preserves a distinctive combination of features not seen in any other known ape from this time. These include exceptionally large canine and premolar teeth, molar teeth with rounded and heavily textured chewing surfaces, and a notably robust jaw. “Together, they suggest that Masripithecus was adapted for versatility. The study interprets its chewing anatomy as evidence of a flexible, mainly fruit-based diet, with the ability to process harder foods such as nuts or seeds when needed. This flexibility would have helped Masripithecus to thrive at a time when climatic changes were leading to more pronounced seasonality in northern Africa and Arabia,” said Shorouq Al-Ashqar, a researcher at the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center, Egypt who was a first author of the study.

Anatomy alone, however, is only part of the story. Masripithecus occupies a key position on the ape family tree. Using sophisticated Bayesian methods, the team combined anatomical evidence from living and extinct apes, DNA from living apes, and the geological ages of fossil species to determine how living and extinct species are related, and when they all split from each other. The researchers’ analysis found that Masripithecus is more closely related to the living apes than are any species known from the Early Miocene of East Africa.

Additional biogeographic analyses by the team point to northern Africa and the Middle East as the most likely home for the common ancestor of all living apes, which is estimated to have lived during the Early Miocene. During that time period, this region occupied a key position as the African and Arabian plates moved to the north during their final phase of collision with Asia. Shifting sea levels periodically reduced marine barriers, turning the region into a natural corridor for animal dispersal.

In this context, Masripithecus provides a crucial intermediate link between the previously disjunct African and Eurasian fossil records, revealing that apes were already diversifying in the area and therefore positioned to expand into Europe and Asia as soon as land connections were established.

Erik Seiffert, a paleontologist at the University of Southern California who was a co-author of the study, said that his perspective on ape origins has changed. “For my entire career, I considered it probable that the common ancestor of all living apes lived in or around East Africa. But this new discovery, and our new and novel analyses of hominoid phylogeny and biogeography, now strongly challenge that idea. And, importantly, the likelihood of this scenario doesn’t depend on Masripithecus — but it is very much consistent with it.”

The researchers anticipate that renewed exploration in this region will uncover further fossils critical to understanding the origin and early diversification of modern apes. As Masripithecus moghraensis shows, key chapters of our evolutionary history may still lie hidden in regions that have yet to be fully explored.

Reference:
An Early Miocene ape from the biogeographic crossroads of African and Eurasian Hominoidea. DOI: 10.1126/science.adz4102

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center (MUVP)

Unraveling active magma by drilling in the heart of volcanoes

Decompression and cooling occur synchronously during thermal quench fragmentation. Credit: Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10317-w
Decompression and cooling occur synchronously during thermal quench fragmentation. Credit: Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10317-w

Although volcanic eruptions are spectacular natural events that occur around the world every day, most volcanoes spend the majority of their time not erupting. To accurately forecast volcanic activity, it’s important to characterize the magma before an eruption is imminent.

A team lead by LMU volcanologist Dr. Janine Birnbaum has managed to directly reconstruct the prevailing conditions in a magma chamber for the first time and reveal how magma reacts to drilling. The results, which were published in the journal Nature, provide important insights that could improve the monitoring of magma and pave the way for new applications.

Magma slowly moves from deep within Earth toward the surface. It often temporarily stops in the crust, where it may reside for years, decades, or even millennia. In that time, it cools, crystallizes, ingests the surrounding crustal rocks, and loses or gains dissolved gases—primarily water and carbon dioxide—that power volcanic eruptions.

An eruption occurs when the magma system is perturbed through the addition of heat, new magma from depth, or the formation of bubbles—like an overheated can of soda that expands and eventually bursts.

Drilling in Krafla volcanic field in Iceland

To understand how volcanoes behave between and before eruptions, it is important to have detailed information about the temperature, pressure, and gas content of the magma in Earth’s crust. However, magma often resides deep below Earth’s surface and is not accessible to direct measurements.

For their new study, the researchers exploited the fact that magma beneath the Krafla volcanic field in the northeast of Iceland comes surprisingly close to the surface. During operations at the Krafla Geothermal Station in 2009, the Iceland Deep Drilling Project 1 (IDDP-1) well unexpectedly intersected a magma body at a depth of just over 2 km. Cold drilling fluids dumped water on the magma, quenching it into tiny chips of glass.

When researchers looked at these chips, they encountered a puzzle: Although the quenched magma had many small bubbles, it held less dissolved gas than the magma was capable of holding at the expected temperature and pressure. To solve this question, the LMU researchers used a new numerical model which showed that the magma reacted to the drilling and lost gas before it fully solidified into glass.

Previous measurements had shown that the magma requires several minutes to cool from an initial temperature of about 900 °C to become a glass at around 520 °C. According to the researchers’ hypothesis, this gives the gas enough time to escape from the melt and to cause the observed bubbles to form.

Gas escapes within five minutes

As such, the gas content in the chips of glass does not reflect the original conditions, but is the product of this dynamic process. “It’s like a blurry photo,” explains Birnbaum.

“But if we know our exposure time and how fast our system moves, we can unravel where it started.” By simulating how fast the gas escapes, the researchers were able to reconstruct the original gas content. This revealed that the “missing” gas was lost in under five minutes during drilling.

According to the researchers, these findings can help make future endeavors in geothermal fields on active volcanoes safer, while also paving the way for targeted drilling into magma for purposes such as monitoring and green energy extraction.

Reference:
Janine Birnbaum et al, Disequilibrium response to tapping crustal magma reveals storage conditions, Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10317-w

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Japan’s giant caldera volcano is refilling 7,300 years later

We know very little about the processes that lead to a re-eruption of supervolcanoes, such as the mostly underwater Kikai caldera in Japan, and are therefore ill-equipped to make predictions. Credit: Seama Nobukazu
We know very little about the processes that lead to a re-eruption of supervolcanoes, such as the mostly underwater Kikai caldera in Japan, and are therefore ill-equipped to make predictions. Credit: Seama Nobukazu

The magma reservoir of the largest volcanic eruption of the Holocene is refilling. This Kobe University insight on the Kikai caldera in Japan allows us to understand giant caldera volcanoes like Yellowstone or Toba more generally and gets us closer to predicting their behavior, too.

Some volcanoes erupt so violently, ejecting more magma than could cover all of Central Park 12 km deep, that all that’s left is just a wide and rather shallow crater, a so-called “caldera.” Examples of such supervolcanoes are the Yellowstone caldera, the Toba caldera and the mostly underwater Kikai caldera in Japan, which last erupted 7,300 years ago in what was the largest volcano eruption in the current geological epoch, the Holocene.

It is known that these volcanoes can and do reerupt but very little is known about the processes that lead up to an eruption and are therefore ill-equipped to make predictions.

“We must understand how such large quantities of magma can accumulate to understand how giant caldera eruptions occur,” says Kobe University geophysicist Seama Nobukazu.

That the Kikai caldera is mostly underwater is, in fact, an advantage in tackling questions like this. Seama explains, “The underwater location allows us to implement systematic, large-scale surveys.”

Thus, the Kobe University researcher teamed up with the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and used airgun arrays that cause artificial seismic pulses together with ocean bottom seismometers that listen to how that seismic wave propagates through Earth’s crust to understand its condition.

The team has published their findings in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. They found that there is indeed a region that consists of a large degree of magma directly underneath the volcano that erupted 7,300 years ago and characterized the reservoir’s size and shape. Seama says, “Due to its extent and location, it is clear that this is in fact the same magma reservoir as in the previous eruption.”

But this magma is likely not a remnant of that eruption. Researchers had become aware that in the center of the caldera a new lava dome has been forming over the past 3,900 years, and chemical analyses showed that the material produced by this and other recent volcanic activity is of a different composition than what was ejected in the last giant eruption.

“This means that the magma that is now present in the magma reservoir under the lava dome is likely newly injected magma,” summarizes Seama. This allows the researchers to propose a general model for how magma reservoirs under caldera volcanoes refill.

“This magma re-injection model is consistent with the existence of large shallow magma reservoirs beneath other giant calderas like Yellowstone and Toba,” says Seama, hoping that his team’s findings may contribute to understanding the magma supply cycles following giant eruptions.

He concludes, saying, “We want to refine the methods that have proved to be so useful in this study to more deeply understand the re-injection processes. Our ultimate goal is to become better able to monitor the crucial indicators of future giant eruptions.”

Reference:
Melt re-injection into large magma reservoir after giant caldera eruption at Kikai Caldera Volcano, Communications Earth & Environment (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-026-03347-9

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Kobe University

Discarded oyster shells may pull rare earth metals from polluted water

The process in action on an oyster shell. Credit: Trinity College Dublin
The process in action on an oyster shell. Credit: Trinity College Dublin

New research from a team at Trinity College Dublin has unearthed a cheap and environmentally friendly new option for removing pollutants from our water. The key? Oyster shells that would ordinarily end up in landfill sites after consumption. The research, just published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, shows that waste seashells—especially those from oysters—can capture and remove rare earth elements from polluted water. And what’s more, they do it entirely naturally, turning them into stable mineral crystals.

What are rare earth elements, and why are they increasingly problematic?

Rare earth elements are essential components of modern technologies, from wind turbines and electric vehicles to smartphones, but their extraction and processing creates environmental risks when these metals leak into water systems. They are also at the center of growing geopolitical tensions, as global supply is heavily concentrated in a few countries and demand for these strategic materials continues to increase.

If released into rivers or lakes, rare earth elements can accumulate in aquatic ecosystems and disrupt microorganisms, plants, and animals. Finding simple and sustainable ways to remove rare earth elements from water is therefore an increasingly urgent environmental challenge.

What have the researchers discovered?

In lab experiments, the team exposed crushed shells (mussels, cockles and oysters) to solutions containing rare earth elements. They discovered that the shells trigger a chemical reaction such that the minerals in the shell dissolve and are replaced by new minerals containing the rare earth elements. In effect, the shells act as a “template” that converts dissolved metals into solid mineral crystals that remain locked inside the shell material.

Among the materials tested, oyster shells performed particularly well. Their natural microstructure allows the chemical reaction to continue deeper into the shell, capturing significantly more rare earth elements than other shells. The results suggest that shell waste could potentially be used as a low-cost and environmentally friendly material to help treat contaminated water—or even to recover valuable metals from industrial streams.

What is the impact of this work?

Dr. Rémi Rateau from Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, who is first author of the study, said, “Among the most exciting elements of the discovery is that relatively small amounts of shell waste could remove substantial quantities of rare earth metals from contaminated water, meaning a genuine, tangible impact could be created with as little as a few kilograms of oyster shells.”

“Every year, the global aquaculture industry generates millions of tons of shell waste, much of which is discarded or sent to landfill, so repurposing this waste could instead offer both an environmental cleanup tool and a sustainable recycling pathway.”

Dr. Juan Diego Rodriguez-Blanco, Trinity’s School of Natural Sciences, and Principal Investigator of the project, added, “What makes this discovery particularly promising is that the process is entirely mineral-driven—the shells naturally transform dissolved rare earth elements into new solid minerals, so this isn’t a process that is difficult to drive, or one that requires much financial outlay or technical equipment.”

“By understanding how these reactions work, we can start designing low-cost and environmentally friendly strategies to remove critical metals from contaminated waters while also giving new value to a major waste product.”

A deeper dive into the science

When interacting with rare-earth-rich solutions, calcium carbonate minerals in the shells dissolve and new rare earth carbonate minerals crystallize in their place. The transformation follows a sequence of mineral phases: calcium carbonate → lanthanite → kozoite → hydroxylbastnäsite, with kozoite being the most common product under the tested experimental conditions.

During the reaction, a crust of rare earth carbonate crystals forms on the shell grains. In mussel and cockle shells, this crust rapidly becomes impermeable, limiting further reaction and leaving more than half of the original shell unchanged. In contrast, the porous microstructure of oyster shells allows the reaction to proceed throughout the grain, enabling almost complete replacement of the original calcium carbonate.

As a result, oyster shells showed the highest performance, achieving a rare earth uptake of up to roughly 1.5 grams of rare earth metals captured per gram of oyster shell. Put another way, a relatively small amount of shell waste could remove substantial quantities of rare earth metals from contaminated water—in practical terms, a few kilograms of shell waste could potentially capture kilograms of dissolved rare earth elements from rare-earth-rich polluted waters.

Dr. Rodriguez-Blanco stated, “The work also revealed that different rare earth elements are incorporated into the crystals at different stages of growth, suggesting that such processes could potentially be used for environmentally friendly rare earth separation technologies in the future.”

Reference:
Rémi Rateau et al, Sustainable rare earth capture using seashell carbonates: Mineralogical pathways and comparative uptake behaviour of mussel, cockle, and oyster shells, Science of The Total Environment (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2026.181698

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Trinity College Dublin.

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