The fossil record of early hominins in South Africa is biased towards periods of drier climate, suggests a study of cave deposits. This finding suggests there are gaps in the fossil record, potentially obscuring evolutionary patterns and affecting our …

The magnitude and trajectory of sea-level change during the Last Interglacial, more specifically Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5e, is uncertain. To date the consensus view has been that sea-level may have been six to nine meters above present sea level. H…

Cave-dwelling corals in the Mediterranean can work alongside one another to catch and eat stinging jellyfish, a study reveals.

At 3.5 meters long and with a shoulder height of 1.7 meters, the cave bear was one of the giants of the Ice Age. Yet few appear to have survived until the last glacial maximum 24,000 to 19,000 years ago. Researchers have conducted analyses to find out …

Bats spend every night hard at work for local farmers, consuming over half of their own weight in insects, many of which are harmful agricultural pests, such as the noctuid moths, corn earworm and fall armyworm. And now they are arriving earlier in the…

Over five years (2009-2014) researchers have delved into the depths of some of China’s most unexplored and unknown caves in the largest ever study on cave floras. Surveying over 60 caves in the Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan regions, they were able to ass…

In 1970, Jacques Cousteau and his team recovered an unusual stalactite from the depths of the Caribbean Sea. Now a geoscientist explains what it reveals about our climate since the last ice age.

In the underground rivers and flooded caves of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, where Mayan lore described a fantastical underworld, scientists have found a cryptic world in its own right.

In recent years, researchers have identified a small group of stalactites that appear to have calcified underwater instead of in a dry cave. The Hells Bells in the El Zapote cave near Puerto Morelos on the Yucatán Peninsula are just such formations. Sc…

Relief from the current dry spell across the interior of the Middle East is unlikely within the next 10,000 years, results of a new study show, which include information during the last glacial and interglacial periods.

Researchers have developed a new way of measuring the pressure inside volcanoes, and found that it can be a reliable indicator of future eruptions.

An analysis of stalagmite records from White Moon Cave in the Santa Cruz Mountains shows that 8200 years ago the California coast underwent 150 years of exceptionally wet and stormy weather. This is the first high resolution record of how the Holocene …

Blind cavefish typically have skulls that bend slightly to the left. A study suggests this orientation might help them find food as they navigate in a perpetual counter-clockwise direction around a cave.

Ice cores drilled from a glacier in a cave in Transylvania offer new evidence of how Europe’s winter weather and climate patterns fluctuated during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period.

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is the dominant atmospheric pressure mode over the North Atlantic that plays a significant role in determining the winter climate in Europe. Depending on the prevailing state of the NAO, Europe experiences mild or v…

Researchers have discovered the first European cave fish. A hobby cave diver first sighted the fish, a loach in the genus Barbatula, living in a hard-to-reach, underground water system in South Germany.

An international group of scientists has used a novel highly sensitive method for detection of environmental DNA in groundwater to extend the poorly known range of the rare subterranean amphibian from the Dinaric Karst. With this highly sensitive non-i…

Biologists have announced the discovery last month of the largest Alberta bat hibernation site (based on estimated bat count) ever recorded outside of the Rocky Mountains.

Scientific findings are awaiting discovery in your backyard. The requirement? A keen sense of observation and patience. A researcher recently completed a study on moles’ behavior that proves the concept. His laboratory? A molehill-dotted city lawn in d…

Have you tried the national dish gofio while on holiday on the Canary Islands? If so, you have eaten the same food as the original inhabitants ate, nearly 2,000 years ago. The island farmers have cultivated the same types of grain for over a thousand y…

Researchers find a bacterium 1,000 feet underground (called Paenibacillus) that is resistant to 18 different antibiotics and uses identical methods of defense as similar species found in soils.

Upper Paleolithic humans may have hunted cave lions for their pelts, perhaps contributing to their extinction, according to a new study.

Considered ‘biodiversity reservoirs,’ most underwater caves are yet to be explored. Furthermore, species diversity and distributional data is currently scattered enough to seriously hinder conservation status assessments. Thereby, a large international…

Stalagmites rising from the floor of a cave in southern Indiana may contain traces of past earthquakes in the region, according to a new report.

When mineral-rich water drips from a cave’s ceiling over centuries and millennia, it forms rocky cones that hold clues to the Earth’s past climate. Now, researchers in Australia and the UK have found that these structures can also help trace past wildf…

Environmental records obtained from archaeological sites in South Africa’s southern Cape suggest climate may not have been directly linked to cultural and technological innovations of Middle Stone Age humans in southern Africa after all.

Scientists have devised a way to test carbon capture and storage, by sampling water at storage sites for an altered form of oxygen. In the first experiment of its kind, researchers studied the different forms of oxygen in waters sampled from rocks deep…

Scientists have led the first full-scale national assessment of metal contamination in bats, showing that many bats in the UK contain levels of metals high enough to cause toxic effects.

Deep inside Bruniquel Cave, in the Tarn et Garonne region of southwestern France, a set of human-made structures 336 meters from the entrance was recently dated as being approximately 176,500 years old. This discovery indicates that humans began occupy…

Scientists roped in the use of high-tech laser scanning, photogrammetry and 3-D mapping technology to map Homo naledi’s Dinaledi chamber.

The Mäanderhöhle cave near Bamberg was previously regarded as an archaeological sensation. It was thought to contain some of the oldest cave art in Germany. However, a researcher has demonstrated that the markings discovered inside the cave in 2005 are not fertility symbols carved by humans as previously thought. In fact, these lines occurred as a result of natural processes, the archaeologist says.

A widespread and permanent loss of forests in Madagascar that occurred 1,000 years ago was due not to climate change or any natural disaster, but to human settlers who set fire to the forests to make way for grazing cattle, suggests researchers.

When carbon dioxide is stored underground in a process known as geological sequestration, it can find multiple escape pathways due to chemical reactions between carbon dioxide, water, rocks and cement from abandoned wells, according to researchers.

Australia’s Nullarbor Plain is one of the driest landscapes in the country, but new research suggests it was once forest that received up to four times as much rain as it gets now.

While most of the knowledge about tiny snails comes from studying deserted shells sifted out from piles of dust and sand, the present research is the first contemporary microscopic exploration of organs in cave snails tinier than 2 mm. The paper reveal…

Nearly 100 fossil species pulled from a flooded cave in the Bahamas reveal a true story of persistence against all odds — at least until the time humans stepped foot on the islands.

Only the microbes located above the water’s surface contribute to the development of hydrogen-sulfide-rich caves, suggests an international team of researchers. Since 2004, researchers have been studying the Frasassi cave system, an actively developing…

Scientists have solved a decades-old geological mystery into what caused the death of a Florida cave diver.

Unique inscriptions found in a cave in China, combined with chemical analysis of cave formations, show how droughts affected the local population over the past five centuries, and underline the importance of implementing strategies to deal with climate…

Doubting whether cave invertebrates feed on just anything they can find in the harsh food-wise environment underground, researchers conducted a research in Slovakian and Romania caves. They studied a number of microwhip scorpions, oribatid mites, milli…

A microbe found in caves produces a compound that inhibits Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome in bats, researchers report. The finding could lead to treatments that kill the fungus while minimizing disruption to ca…

Scientists have discovered the deepest underground dwelling centipede. The animal was found in three caves in the Velebit Mountains, Croatia. Recorded as deep as 1,100 meters, the new species was named after Hades, the god of the underworld in Greek my…

Research on limestone formations in a remote Scottish cave has produced a unique 3000-year-long record of climatic variations that may have influenced historical events including the fall of the Roman Empire and the Viking Age of expansion. The study o…

It turns out that the steady dripping of water deep underground can reveal a surprising amount of information about the constantly changing cycles of heat and cold, precipitation and drought in the turbulent atmosphere above. The analysis of a stalagmi…

Scientists have discovered a new species of typhlogammarid amphipod in the limestone karstic caves of Chjalta mountain range — the southern foothills of the Greater Caucasus Range.

Scientists have created a 2,200-year-long record of extreme rainfall events that might also help predict future climate change.

The Middle East, with temperate winters, was until recently considered an unlikely host for hibernating mammals. Now new research is set to change the very concept of hibernation. Researchers discovered two species of the mouse-tailed bat that hibernate at the unusually warm and constant temperature of about 68°F in caves in Israel’s Great Rift Valley.

Two new species of tiny subterranean snails enrich the biodiversity of Northern Spain. Zospeum vasconicum and Zospeum zaldivarae belong to a group of blind, diaphanous snails known to inhabit caves from Northern Spain to the Dinaric Alps of former Yugo…

Scientists have produced a rainfall record strongly suggesting that man-made industrial emissions have contributed to less rainfall in the northern tropics. The research team reconstructed rainfall patterns stretching back more than 450 years by analys…

Taking inspiration from nature, researchers have created a versatile model to predict how stalagmite-like structures form in nuclear processing plants – as well as how lime scale builds up in kettles.