Sascha Pare

The Salar de Uyuni desert is famous for its gleaming surface waters and hexagonal salt crust patterns, but below this otherworldly landscape lie about 11 million tons of highly sought-after lithium.

Huge iron ore deposits in Western Australia's Hamersley Province formed when major tectonic events led to the breakup of supercontinent Columbia and to the amalgamation of Australia.

Geologists have revealed new details about a recent geyser eruption at Yellowstone National Park, including the shallow depth of the explosion and staggering height of its plume.

Plants growing at the bottom of sinkholes in China's Dashiwei Tiankeng Group don't take up as much carbon as surface plants do, but they have much higher levels of nutrients in their tissues.

A buildup of methane and other fluids in open and closed "systems" in the permafrost could explain why strange, icy mounds sometimes erupt to form giant crater, researchers say.

An air taxi has completed the first forward flight of a hydrogen-fueled aircraft capable of vertical takeoff and landing — and it broke a distance record in the process.

Lake Kivu, one of the African Great Lakes, sits along a tectonic plate boundary called the East African Rift, which is dotted with hot springs that feed carbon dioxide and methane into the water.

A hydrothermal eruption Tuesday (July 23) morning surprised visitors walking among the colorful hot springs in Yellowstone National Park's Biscuit Basin, near the famous Old Faithful geyser.

Researchers have discovered that, unlike other four-legged mammals, hippopotamuses trot at high speeds and become airborne for "quite a large amount of time."

In a global first, scientists working in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone in the North Pacific Ocean have found that metallic nodules on the seafloor produce their own oxygen, dubbed "dark oxygen."

Coastguards had to tow a 40-foot-long sailboat back to port after two young orcas severely damaged the boat's rudder near Guilvinec in the French region of Brittany.

Scientists consider Last Chance Lake to be an analog for lakes that may have existed on Earth 4 billion years ago and contained the ingredients for early life on our planet.

A coastal taipan named Cyclone recently delivered three times the average amount of venom for its species in one go, setting a new record.

Reports of a daylight fireball and loud booms across New York City and New Jersey suggest a meteor entered the atmosphere above the city and traveled west at 38,000 mph, NASA says.

A string of fur seal attacks on surfers and beachgoers in Cape Town has been linked to an outbreak of rabies, with 11 seals testing positive for the virus so far.

Researchers in Australia spotted a magnificent tree frog with blue skin — the result of a rare genetic mutation called axanthism, which suppresses yellow pigments that usually tint the frogs green.

Dozens of long-finned pilot whales have beached and died on Sanday in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, in the biggest mass stranding the country has seen since 1995.

Norway's photogenic "Dragon's Eye" likely formed around 20,000 years ago, when all of Scandinavia sat beneath an enormous mass of ice called the Fennoscandian Ice Sheet.

New seismic data show that a helium reservoir discovered in February in northern Minnesota is larger than initial estimates indicated, inching the project closer to commercial extraction.

In a breakthrough that could boost de-extinction efforts, scientists have determined the 3D structure of a woolly mammoth's genome from a 52,000-year-old piece of freeze-dried skin.

Scorching temperatures up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit are expected across the U.S. West Coast in the coming days, as a heat dome hovers over the region.

A 77-square-mile seagrass meadow at the bottom of Shark Bay in Western Australia is both Earth's largest plant and largest clone.

During 37 years of operations, the now-closed Argyle mine produced more than 865 million carats (191 tons) of rough diamonds and 90% of the world's pink diamonds.

Geologists set Turkmenistan's Darvaza gas crater ablaze in 1971, thinking the fire would die down within a few weeks, but the pit is still burning 53 years later.