Despite seeming like a relatively stable place, the Earth's surface has changed dramatically over the past 4.6 billion years. Mountains have been built and eroded, continents and oceans have moved ...

In the late 1700s, while inspecting a coal mine in southwest England, a young surveyor named William Smith noticed a surprising pattern: from one location to the next, rock layers (or "strata") were ...

Cody Cottier is a freelance journalist for Discover Magazine, who frequently covers new scientific studies about animal behavior, human evolution, consciousness, astrophysics, and the environment.