They are in your smartphone, electric vehicles and used widely in renewable energy technology. But what exactly are ‘rare earth’ elements and just how rare are they?
The contents of the last meal consumed by the earliest animals known to inhabit Earth more than 550 million years ago has unearthed new clues about the physiology of our earliest animal ancestors, according to scientists from ANU.
Almost all volcanic rocks come from the Earth's upper mantle (or lava).
Volcanism, on the other hand, can have many different chemical and physical effects and can sometimes bring rare things to the surface, like diamonds and various strange rock fragments.
The timing and intensity of the seasons shapes life all around us, including tool use by birds, the evolutionary diversification of giraffes, and the behaviour of our close primate relatives.
A new Nature Geoscience study from The Australian National University (ANU) offers further clues about what happened to the Mediterranean during a tumultuous period that likely included the most catastrophic flooding event in Earth's recorded history.