2 May 2024
\n \n \n \nProfessor Samar Khatiwala, from the Department of Earth Sciences, has led a major advance to solve a critical issue in modelling future climate change. The findings have been published in Science Advances.
\n \n\n \n \n24 April 2024
\n \n \n \nA new study, led by the University of Oxford and MIT, has recovered a 3.7-billion-year-old record of Earth\u2019s magnetic field, and found that it appears remarkably similar to the field surrounding Earth today. The findings have been published today in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
\n \n\n \n \n20 March 2024
\n \n \n \nA new study conducted by researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences has challenged previously held views that brain preservation in the archaeological record is extremely rare.
\n \n\n \n \n12 March 2024
\n \n \n \nDespite being scattered across more than a million square kilometres, new research has revealed that remote coral reefs across the Seychelles are closely related. A network of ocean currents scatter significant numbers of larvae between these distant islands, acting as a \u2018coral superhighway.\u2019
\n \n\n \n \n8 March 2024
\n \n \n \nA new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford has used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results, published today in the journal Science, could help to identify species most at risk today from human-driven climate change.
\n \n\n \n \n12 January 2024
\n \n \n \nHead of Oxford University\u2019s Department of Earth Sciences, Professor John-Michael Kendall, has today been awarded the 2024 Gold Medal for Geophysics from the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The award recognises his outstanding work in the field of seismology (the study of earthquakes and seismic waves in the Earth\u2019s interior) and for his support for the next generation of seismic researchers.
\n \n\n \n \n15 November 2023
\n \n \n \nProfessors David Pyle and Tamsin Mather from the Department of Earth Sciences discuss what might happen next in a sequence of seismic events that started in early 2020 in Iceland, and which has so far culminated in three eruptions.
\n \n\n \n \n13 October 2023
\n \n \n \nRoss Anderson, Research Fellow in Palaeobiology in the Department of Earth Sciences, suggests a new way to estimate the timing of animal origins: considering which kind of rocks could preserve those animals, rather than documenting the oldest animal fossils.
\n \n\n \n \n5 October 2023
\n \n \n \nA new study led by the Department of Earth Sciences has overturned the view that natural rock weathering acts as a CO2 sink, indicating instead that this can act as a large CO2 source, rivalling that of volcanoes. The results, published today in the journal Nature, have important implications for modelling climate change scenarios.
\n \n\n \n \n12 September 2023
\n \n \n \nProfessor Richard Walker (Department of Earth Sciences) describes the background to the devastating 8 September 2023 Morocco earthquake, which has a current death toll of nearly 2,500 lives.
\n \n\n \n \n15 August 2023
\n \n \n \nPlate divergence at Mid Ocean Ridges where new tectonic plates are formed is generally thought to be a passive process dominated by the gravitational pull of subducting plates. However, this new study shows that at some diverging locations this process is likely to be less passive than originally thought.
\n \n\n \n \n28 June 2023
\n \n \n \nA study led by researchers in the Department of Earth Sciences has brought us one step closer to solving a mystery that has puzzled naturalists since Charles Darwin: when did animals first appear in the history of Earth? The results have been published today in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
\n \n\n \n \n27 June 2023
\n \n \n \nTogether with colleagues from UEA and the University of the West Indies, researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences will lead 'Sensing Volcanoes', one of the nine flagship exhibits this year.
\n \n\n \n \n10 March 2023
\n \n \n \nA new technique developed by researchers in the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford could help locate new deposits of critical metals needed to enable the green-energy transition.
\n \n\n \n \n3 March 2023
\n \n \n \nResearch led by Oxford's Department of Earth Sciences offers a new model to account for the existence of previously unexplained helium-rich reservoirs, with findings that could help overturn the current supply crisis of the gas by locating untapped reservoirs of accessible helium.
\n \n\n \n \n16 February 2023
\n \n \n \nResearchers have used nearly half a million fossils to solve a 200-year-old scientific mystery: why the number of different species is greatest near the equator and decreases steadily towards polar regions.
\n \n\n \n \n19 January 2023
\n \n \n \nA new high-resolution model to quantify the sources of plastic debris accumulating on beaches across the Seychelles and other island states in the western Indian Ocean reveals that most of this waste originates from distant sources and not from the islands themselves.
\n \n\n \n \n17 January 2023
\n \n \n \nNew study places Schleromochlus closer to the origin of pterosaurs than other lagerpetids, providing a reference point for research into pterosaur development.
\n \n\n \n \n11 January 2023
\n \n \n \nAn interview with Elsa Panciroli from the Department of Earth Sciences, a palaeontologist who uses X-ray tomography and digital visualisation to understand the anatomy and growth of the first mammals and their closest relatives.
\n \n\n \n \n15 December 2022
\n \n \n \nThe University of Oxford has been selected to help deliver the Met Office Academic Partnership (MOAP) for a further three years, as part of a multi-institutional agreement supporting cutting-edge research in the science of weather and climate prediction.
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