Research by PhD student Malcolm Hodgskiss finds new evidence for a mass extinction event 2.05 billion years ago in barite samples from Hudson Bay, Canada .

Harbaugh, former chair of the Department of Geology, was a foundational figure in mathematical geology and active in campus leadership. He died July 28 at age 92.

When significant oxygen entered the atmosphere, ancient life multiplied. But after a few hundred million years, Earth’s oxygen plummeted, resulting in a die-off likely greater than the extinction of the dinosaurs.

New research using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has provided a rare glimpse at the surface of a rocky planet outside our solar system. The planet may be similar to Mercury or Earth’s moon, with little to no atmosphere.