Brandywine Earth sciences professor to give the 2023 Lattman Lecture
Laura Guertin, distinguished professor of Earth sciences at Penn State Bradywine, will give the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ 2023 Lattman Visiting Scholar of Science and Society Lecture.
Curiosity rover finds new evidence of ancient Mars rivers, a key signal for life
New analysis of data from the Curiosity rover reveals that much of the craters on Mars today could have once been habitable rivers.
Q&A: Searching for life where it shouldn’t exist
A team of Penn State scientists is working to solve one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries: how life originated on Earth — and how it might have evolved on other planets.
Fossils show widespread plant extinctions after asteroid wiped out dinosaurs
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid the size of San Francisco crashed into a shallow sea off the coast of modern-day Mexico and plunged the world into an extinction event that killed off as much as 75% of life, including the dinosaurs.
Earth’s crust, tectonic plates gradually formed, geoscientists find
The Earth’s crust continued a slow process of reworking for billions of years, rather than rapidly slowing its growth some 3 billion years ago, according to a Penn State-led research team. The new finding contradicts existing theories that suggest the rapid formation of tectonic plates earlier in Earth’s history, researchers said.
20 students receive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships
The Graduate School at Penn State welcomes 20 new National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recipients for the 2023-24 academic year.
Ears to the ice: Icequakes in Antarctica linked to ocean tides
When the ground rumbles in Antarctica, it may be an icequake — like an earthquake but caused by the movement of ice, not rock. A new study by Penn State researchers found that these seismic events are driven by ocean tides at a major ice stream in West Antarctica
Halina Dingo named Earth and Mineral Sciences' summer 2023 student marshal
Geosciences student Halina Dingo represented the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences as the student marshal for Penn State's summer commencement.
Spurge purge: Plant fossils reveal ancient South America-to-Asia ‘escape route’
Anyone who has taken a long road trip or bike ride has used a product of the spurge plant family — rubber. The spurge family, or Euphorbiaceae, includes economically valuable plants like the rubber tree, castor oil plant, poinsettia and cassava. Newly identified fossils found in Argentina suggest that a group of spurges took a trip of their own tens of millions of years ago. Driven by climatic changes and land movements over millennia, a group of spurges relocated thousands of miles from ancient South America to Australia, Asia and parts of Africa, according to research led by Penn State.
University Libraries Research Awards honor 136 students from 20 campuses
Penn State University Libraries presented its sixth annual Undergraduate Research Award: Excellence in Information Literacy honors at the end of the spring 2023 semester to 136 students at 20 undergraduate Penn State campuses.