Geology is what we look to when we want enduring monuments. Rock and metal outlast anything made of living tissue. Or do they? In another example of science getting poetic, it seems that a symbol of ephemera — a butterfly — provides evidence of a mountain long turned to dust.

Today, many scientists believe we are on the cusp of a sixth mass extinction which could wipe out most life on Earth as we know it. Here are seven signs that they could be right.

Lurking beneath Yellowstone National Park is a massive underground reservoir of magma, capped by the park's famous caldera. 640,000 years ago, a super eruption rocked the region. What would happen if another such event blasted the park today? We asked USGS geologist Jake Lowenstern, scientist-in-charge of the…

Working at a depth of 1.5 miles, geoscientists have discovered an ancient and isolated reservoir that contains water estimated to be anywhere from 1.5 to 2.7 billion years old. It’s the oldest free-flowing sample of water ever discovered — and now the researchers want to know what’s in it.

A scientist has set out to create a geological map of Skyrim. It's kind of rough at this point, she admits, but it's still pretty awesome.

A new study suggests that Mars’s 3.5-mile high Mount Sharp formed as strong winds carried dust and sand into the crater in which it rests. If true, Gale Crater probably never contained a lake, which would totally suck, because that’s one of the main reasons why NASA sent Curiosity there in the first place.

Our planet is covered in pockmarks so deep that they can be seen from space. Some were caused by asteroid strikes, but most are the result of human meddling. Here are some of the most incredible examples of the scarred Earth.

There's growing evidence that Earth may be headed for a mass extinction, where over 75 percent of all species die out and the world is changed forever. There's also evidence that humans would survive such an event — for better or for worse. Here's why.

This is part two of a two-part series on the limits of human economic growth on planet Earth. Part one details some of the environmental and natural resource challenges we’re up against. Here, we look at the ultimate size of the resource pool and solutions to our problems.

Columbia University earth scientist Peter Keleman is sick of hearing that we're doomed to suffer horrific climate disasters. And it's not because he doesn't believe in global warming — it's because he does, and he understands it a lot better than the doomsayers do.