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34 news posts in Frontiers in Earth Science

Featured news

18 Jul 2022

Alzheimer’s impact on the brain is broader than we thought and 4 other fascinating Frontiers articles you don’t want to miss

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers science communications manager Image: Shutterstock.com At Frontiers, we bring some of the world’s best research to a global audience. But with tens of thousands of articles published each year, many often fly under the radar. Here are just five amazing papers you may have missed. Impact of Alzheimer’s on the brain may be greater than previously thought A significant review of more than 200,000 scientific publications has shown that the effects of Alzheimer’s disease on the brain are far broader than initially thought. Writing in their review article in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, the international team of researchers said that they wanted to understand the breadth and diversity of biological pathways – key molecular chain reactions that drive changes in cells – that contribute to Alzheimer’s disease by research over the last 30 years. They found that while nearly all known pathways have been linked to the disease, the most frequently associated biological mechanisms have not significantly changed in the last three decades, despite major technological advances. These include those related to the immune system, metabolism, and long-term depression. They also found that the top-ranked 30 pathways most frequently referred to in literature remained relatively consistent […]

Environment

20 Apr 2022

Most read articles of March 2022: Secrets of ancient leftovers revealed and endangered shark discovered in pet food

By Colm Gorey, Science Communications Manager, Frontiers Image: Shutterstock.com Each month, Frontiers shines a spotlight on some of the leading research across a wide range of topics. Here are just some of the highlights that resonated strongly with readers on our news site in the month of March. Leftovers in prehistoric pots let scientists peek into the kitchen of an ancient civilization How do you reconstruct the cookery of people who lived thousands of years ago? Bones and plant remains can tell us what kind of ingredients were available. But to reconstruct how ingredients were combined and cooked, scientists need to study ancient cooking vessels. “Fatty molecules and microscopic remains from plants such as starch grains and phytoliths – silica structures deposited in many plant tissues – get embedded into vessels and can survive over long periods,” said Dr Akshyeta Suryanarayan, a researcher at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, and co-author on a recent study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. In their study, Suryanarayan and co-authors analyzed such ‘leftovers’ in Copper and Bronze Age vessels – including pots, vases, goblets, jars, and platters – from today’s Gujarat, India. “Our study is the first to combine starch grain […]

Earth science

25 Mar 2022

Last of the giant camels and archaic humans lived together in Mongolia until 27,000 years ago

By Mischa Dijkstra, Frontiers science writer Camelus knoblochi would have dwarfed the modern domestic Bactrian camel, Camelus bactrianus, which also has two humps. Image credit: Bandurka/Shutterstock.com This is the first report of fossils of a species of giant camel, Camelus knoblochi, from today’s Mongolia. The author show that the species’ last refuge in the world was in Mongolia until 27,000 years ago. There, they coexisted with archaic humans and the much smaller wild Bactrian camel C. ferus. Climate changing leading to desertification and possibly hunting by humans and competition with C. ferus drove C. knoblochi into extinction. A species of giant two-humped camel, Camelus knoblochi, is known to have lived for approximately a quarter of a million years in Central Asia. A new study in Frontiers in Earth Science shows that C. knoblochi’s last refuge was in Mongolia, until approximately 27,000 years ago. In Mongolia, the last of the species coexisted with anatomically modern humans and maybe the extinct Neanderthals or Denisovans. While the main cause of C. knoblochi’s extinction seems to have been climate change, hunting by archaic humans may also have played a role. “Here we show that the extinct camel Camelus knoblochi persisted in Mongolia until climatic […]

Earth science

15 Jul 2021

Biogeoscience Chief Editor is the Recipient of the 2021 R. Berner Lectureship

Dr. Alexandra Turchyn We are honored to announce that Dr. Alexandra (Sasha) Turchyn, Co-Chief Editor of the Biogeoscience section of Frontiers in Earth Science is a recipient of the 2021 R. Berner Lectureship for her important contributions in the field of global geochemical cycles.  Recipients of this Lectureship are selected for their ‘exceptional ability to define globally important biogeochemical processes, develop new understandings, and significantly advance the corresponding area of research.’ Dr. Turchyn was presented the lectureship at the Goldschmidt 2021 conference, where she gave a Keynote Lecture on the topic of ‘Exploring the biogeochemical sulfur cycle over the past 150 million years’.  Dr. Turchyn graduated from Harvard University in 2005, and is currently a Reader in Biogeochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Her present research field includes understanding how the ocean’s chemistry has changed over time. It focuses on how interrelated biogeochemical cycles have responded to changes in climate on earth. Check out the Biogeoscience section The R. Berner Lectureship was established in 2017 to commemorate the late Robert Berner who was known for his outstanding contributions in the field of Geochemistry, including his contributions to modeling the carbon cycle. It is a joint program of the Geochemical Society […]

Earth science

22 Feb 2021

Jingmai O’Connor: ‘I think people imagine we spend far more time digging up fossils than we actually do’

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers science writer/Jingmai O’Connor Jingmai O’Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago’s Field Museum. Image: Jesse Goldberg Jingmai O’Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago’s Field Museum, discusses a recent ‘bizarre’ ancient digestive discovery and the issue of diversity in paleontology. In a recently published study to Frontiers in Earth Science, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Field Museum in the US published findings on the discovery of quartz crystals in the stomach of a fossilized bird that lived alongside the dinosaurs. According to Jingmai O’Connor, the associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago’s Field Museum who contributed to the paper, it appeared to be “some kind of bizarre form of soft tissue preservation that we’ve never seen before”. She added: “Figuring out what’s in this bird’s stomach can help us understand what it ate and what role it played in its ecosystem.” O’Connor is an American paleontologist whose research focuses on the dinosaur-bird transition and the Mesozoic evolution of birds and other flying dinosaurs. Her research includes studies of exceptional soft tissues, such as lung and ovary traces preserved in specimens from Jehel Biota between 130 million and 130 million years ago. […]