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

Earth’s Ediacaran Period, roughly 630 to 540 million years ago, has always been something of a magnetic minefield for scientists. During earlier and later time periods, tectonic plates kept a steady ...

Smithsonian researcher Ingrid Romero studies fossil pollen to reconstruct ancient climates and predict future changes Erin Wunderlich Researcher Ingrid Romero holds a case full of pollen slides at the ...