Stephanie Pappas

Mystery blobs in Earth’s mantle may be chunks of a Mars-sized space rock that crashed into our planet 4.5 billion years ago, scientists discover.

The gold and platinum that came from giant space rocks should have sunk into Earth’s core instead of rising to the crust. Scientists have now worked out how this happened — and it may explain some really weird blobs deep in our planet’s mantle.

Modern Europeans have a smaller proportion of Neanderthal genes in their genomes than East Asians do. New research suggests the reason lies at the feet of migrating early farmers.

A long-lost tectonic plate dubbed ‘Pontus’ that was a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean was discovered by chance by scientists studying ancient rocks in Borneo.

A new ore, dubbed niobobaotite, was discovered in Inner Mongolia’s Bayan Obo deposit and contains the rare earth element niobium — a valuable metal that acts as a superconductor and could revolutionize battery technology.

The discovery of seemingly home-grown carbon dioxide suggests Europa’s ice-covered ocean could be habitable.

Placozoans, animals so simple they look like blobby pancakes, have been found to contain cells that may hold the ancestors of modern neurons.

Researchers analyzed RNA from the 130-year-old tissue of a Tasmanian tiger, a carnivorous marsupial that went extinct nine decades ago.

The Argyle formation in Australia, which hosts 90% of the world’s pink diamonds, formed when the first supercontinent broke up.

The risk of a rare type of brain hemorrhage may be transmissible, though the absolute risk is very low.