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Substantial evolution of the Nile River over the past 11,500 years, shaping the riverine landscape and ancient Egyptian culture, is linked to climate and environmental changes, according to analyses of sediment cores near Luxor dated with optically stimulated luminescence.
The pyramids of the Western desert in Egypt were built alongside a now extinct branch of the Nile River named as the Ahramat Branch and identified using a combination of radar satellite imagery, geophysical data and deep soil coring.
The end of the green Sahara in the mid-Holocene was gradual, but punctuated by rapidly changing episodes of extreme drought and wetness, to which human societies were exposed and had to adapt to, as a lake record from southern Ethiopia suggests.
The stability of the ice margin in Baffin Bay led to active decentering of sediments in the deep basin and slopes 25,000−15,000 years ago, but as the ice sheet retreated 13,000-11,000 years ago, deposition moved largely toward the shelf, according to radiocarbon records from 79 sediment cores.
An integrated model of mineral weathering and carbon cycling reveals the substantial influence that clay minerals originating from the weathering of magnesium-rich rocks have on Earth’s climate. This research indicates that this clay-forming process contributed to each Palaeozoic glaciation.
An article in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems uncovers the source, distribution, and concentration of rare earth elements, yttrium and scandium in sea-floor sediments within the South Pacific Gyre.
The colonization of Earth landmasses by vascular plants around 430 million years ago substantially impacted erosion and sediment transport mechanisms. This left behind fingerprints in magmatic rocks, linking the evolution of Earth’s biosphere with its internal processes.
An article in Water Research investigated the rates, microbe types and main drivers of dark carbon fixation within intertidal sediments from the Yangtze Estuary, China.