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Mud can be surprisingly clear. A global team of scientists has uncovered a hidden truth: Human actions are shaping the journey of mud. Over the course of decades, our activities have wielded significant influence over the movement and dispersion of mud, affecting carbon storage and cycling worldwide.

Two professors in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida have been named Distinguished Teaching Scholars by the Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars, an advisory board that aims to elevate teaching excellence and celebrate faculty who go above and beyond for their students.

Lying in the bed of her parents’ pickup truck in 1990s South Carolina, marveling at meteor showers across the night sky, a grade-school Amy Williams would often wonder: “Is there another variety of little girl out there, looking back and wondering if she’s also alone in the universe?”

Luis Torres, a second-year doctoral student in the University of Florida’s department of geological sciences, has won first place in this year’s Three Minute Thesis Competition. Torres is advised by Michal Kowalewski, the Thompson chair of invertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

How biochar sets a course for the future by capturing carbon and helping our soils.

In a recent announcement, paleoceanographer ELLEN E. MARTIN has been elected as an American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fellow, joining 53 other individuals in the 2023 Class of Fellows.

A new study featuring data from the NASA Mars Perseverance rover reports on an instrumental detection potentially consistent with organic molecules on the Martian surface, hinting toward past habitability of the Red Planet.

Much has changed since the Department of Geological Sciences was founded in 1948, shortly after the University of Florida became coeducational. It’s been a winding road, not without its ups and downs as the department worked to cement its identity over time. Now, as the department celebrates 75 years of academic excellence, the anniversary offers an opportunity to honor the past while embracing all that lies ahead in the future.

Stephanie Killingsworth has been named a recipient of the Winifred Goldring Award by the Association for Women Geoscientists.

Coastal ecosystems globally lock away more carbon dioxide than they release, but emissions of two other greenhouse gases – methane and nitrous oxide – counteract that to a degree, according to international researchers led by Australia’s Southern Cross University that include a University of Florida biogeochemist.

The University of Florida Research Foundation has named 34 of the university’s most productive and promising faculty members as UFRF Professors for 2023.

Frank Blanchard recently passed away at age 91, having lived a rich and significant life.

In 2020, amid the first pandemic lockdowns, a scientific conference scheduled to take place in India never happened. But a group of geologists who were already on site decided to make the most of their time and visited the Bhimbetka Rock Shelters, a series of caves with ancient cave art near Bhopal, India. There, they spotted the fossil of Dickinsonia¸ a flat, elongated and primitive animal from before complex animals evolved.

AMY WILLIAMS of the Department of Geological Sciences has received a Spring 2022 UF Excellence Award for Assistant Professors, supporting her research expenses in the coming year.

Last summer, University of Florida geologist ANITA MARSHALL traveled to Northern Arizona to scout locations for a field course she would be leading in 2022.

Billions of years ago, a Martian river flowed with such force that it tumbled boulders in its path, strewing them out into its massive delta. University of Florida astrobiologist Amy Williams looked up from the bed of that ancient river to its rocky remnants, courtesy of the Mars Perseverance rover, which sends on-the-ground views of the red planet back to Williams and the rest of the NASA team.