Origins of agriculture
Greenhouse “time machine” sheds light on corn domestication
February 07, 2014
Lower atmospheric carbon and cooler temperatures may have contributed to the domestication of corn, a new study shows.
Lower atmospheric carbon and cooler temperatures may have contributed to the domestication of corn, a new study shows.
Thousands of years of hunting has turned a substantial meal into a bite-sized snack.
Panama’s infamous canal grass rises from the ashes of fire much faster than trees, complicating reforestation efforts.
How will tropical forests respond to a warmer climate with higher atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations? By growing plants in geodesic domes, Smithsonian scientist Klaus Winter is seeking answers.
What do warmer nights mean for the release of carbon dioxide by tropical forests?
20-million-year-old fossil seeds shed light on origins of plant biodiversity in Panama.
Fossil reefs from around the Caribbean show how biologically rich these ecosystems once were — and provide goalposts for conservationists hoping to restore them.
About 66 million years ago, a radical change on the Earth filled tropical forests with flowers. A new catalog of fossil pollen grains may hold an explanation.
Smithsonian scientists who documented massive mortality of corals and reef organisms meticulously studied one of the apparent causes: oxygen deficiency. A Smithsonian paleobiologist asks if the recent fossil record shows signs of similar hypoxia events.
Perhaps old species, like some older people, gradually lose their ability to deal with changes in their environment. Aaron O’Dea and colleagues show that when the Caribbean was cut off from the Pacific by the rise of the Panama land bridge, evolutionarily old species took longer to expand into new habitats than evolutionarily younger species did.