Geology news, features and articles

Earth from space This 2012 satellite photo shows a series of giant windblown ridges, known as yardangs, and a group of towering sand dunes at the heart of Iran's Lut Desert.

The Fossil Forest in Dorset is a stretch of southern English coastline peppered with living mounds of limestone that hide the remains of cypress trees from the late Jurassic period.

The Hailin impact crater is a newly-discovered scar in the mountains of Northeast China left behind by a meteor impact, but geologists aren't sure exactly when this happened.

Chinese officials have announced the discovery of a massive deposit of high-quality gold ore, potentially worth around $83 billion, which could end up being the largest known deposit of the precious metal anywhere in the world.

Earth from space This 2013 astronaut photo shows a giant eye-shaped impact crater in the Sahara Desert that is slowly being circled by migrating sand dunes, helping researchers track how far these dunes can move over time.

Mapping in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska has uncovered a 1,640-foot-tall structure on the seafloor, but scientists say it's too early to determine the nature of the discovery.

Stunningly preserved fossils of reptilian footprints and underbellies discovered last year in the Italian Alps have helped researchers unearth a tropical lakeside ecosystem that predates dinosaurs.

The near-complete database reflects a spirit of trust and collaboration among the country’s scientific community — but will it last?

Until now, Antarctica was the only continent on Earth without any known amber fossils. But sediment cores taken from below the seafloor have revealed a tiny piece of fossilized resin holding fragments of an ancient rainforest that covered the South Pole during the Cretaceous period.