ENVIRONMENT & CLIMATENo you didn't take anything to make you hallucinate. Some mushrooms and other fungi just glow, and this phenomenon is a mystery dating back to ancient times. Now, scientists have created some fake, glowing mushrooms and scattered them in a Brazilian forest in the hopes of once and for all solving this mystery.
Scientists have unearthed fossils in North Carolina of a large land-dwelling crocodile that lived about 231 million years ago, walked on its hind legs and was the top land predator before dinosaurs even appeared.
China's latest stance on the environment can be called contradictory even for them. A powerful documentary on air pollution, produced with official support, went viral after it was released online only to be blocked and wiped clean on the Chinese Internet by the government days later. Then, President Xi Jinping vowed to punish "violators" who damage the environment "with an iron hand" and Premier Li Keqiang calling pollution "a blight on people's quality of life" and promising significant cuts in emissions.
The Everglades have taken a beating over the years. So much so that 15 years ago the state of Florida in partnership with federal officials from Washington issued a statement declaring their partnership in the goal of re-establishing the Everglades by 2030.
It seems that efforts to restore the manatee population is beginning to pay off as a record number of manatees have been tallied in Florida's annual survey of endangered marine mammals, state wildlife officials said on Monday.
The Pinzon giant tortoises in the Galapagos Islands are breeding again. For the first time in a century, scientists have found baby giant tortoises that have been born in the wild.
While much of the northeastern and central United States froze to death this snowy winter, the cold chill didn't extend to the north as scientists have discovered that the winter ice levels are at record lows.
When did humans rise to become the dominant species on the planet? It might not be as long ago as you might think. Scientists now believe that humans didn't truly rise to become the dominant species on the planet with the ability to drastically impact the planet until 1610.
About 7 thousands years ago and predating the Egyptians by several thousands of years lived a tribe of people off the coast of Chile and southern Peru lived a tribe of people known today as "the Chinchorro". Like the ancient Egyptians, the Chinchorro used to mummify its dead, creating the oldest known mummies on Earth. But today, these mummies are now threatened by climate change.
A bird that scientists believed to have gone extinct decades ago has been rediscovered in Myanmar, after a team of scientists used a recording of its distinctive call to track it down.
Scientists, using a new 3-D scanning technique, have finally been able to make a reasonable estimate of the weight of the world's most famous Stegosaurus, Sophie.
By now it is pretty clear that we are beginning to experience visible effects resulting from climate change. Melting ice sheets, extreme drought and even heavy rain and snowfall can all be attributed to climate change. But one of the most terrifying results of climate change is the increased threat of war. A new study has found evidence that climate change stoked the fires and helped plunge Syria into civil war.
Scientists have discovered that Arctic sea ice, the ice that freezes and floats on waters in the Arctic, is thinning at much faster rate that they previously thought.
A rare sea creature found off the coast of Australia in January has finally made its way to the Australian Museum for study. The creature, a rare goblin shark often referred to as an "alien of the deep" was originally found off the coast of Australia by a fishermen that has since donated it to the museum.
Surviving an Ice Age may sound like an easy task for a penguin. However, a new study of how climate change has affected emperor penguins over the last 30,000 years found that only three different populations of penguins survived during the last ice age, and the Ross Sea in Antarctica was likely the refuge for one of the populations.
When you don't know how to get to where you are going, chances are you pull out a smartphone or other type of device with a Global Positioning System (GPS) to help guide you where you need to go. What you may not know is that the signals traveling between the GPS satellites and your devices can get distorted thanks to the Earth's upper atmosphere.
It is no secret that greenhouse gas emissions, and especially carbon dioxide, are on the rise much to the alarm of governments, scientists and environmentalists around the globe. These gases get their name from their effect of trapping the suns energy inside the atmosphere causing temperatures to rise. However, scientists had not directly observed this effect, until now.
A new study by Reuters/IPSOS has found that a majority of Americans see it as a "moral obligation" to reduce carbon emissions and stop climate change to ensure the continued health of the planet.
While many argue that the fight against greenhouse gases is long over, climatologists and ecologists continue to urge that the battle continues on. And while the culprits are all the same, the problems with these remnants of burning fossil fuels are taking on new problems. A topic of major research has developed from these changes and now researchers are quantify just how it will impact our world in the years to come.
What could be worse than living on a frozen tundra, you ask? Experiencing the world in only two tastes has got to be pretty rough. And when you’re noshing down on fish day in and day out, only being able to taste things that are salty or sour has got to be a bummer too. But sadly, this is the life of the penguin.
As temperatures around the globe continue to rise we could begin to experience more severe forms of weather much more often, according to a new study. Researchers taking part in the study now believe that the climate phenomena known as El Nino and La Nina are likely to increase in both frequency and violence thanks to global warming.