A mysterious cycle of booms and busts in marine biodiversity over the past 500 million years could be tied to a periodic uplifting of the world's continents.

Unexpected new findings by a University of Maryland team of geochemists show that some portions of the Earth's mantle (the rocky layer between Earth's metallic core and crust) formed when the planet was much smaller than it is now, and that some of this early-formed mantle survived Earth's turbulent formation, including a collision with another planet-sized body that many scientists believe led to the creation of the Moon.

The biological and geographical website EurekaMag.com publishes reviews of specific subjects of all areas of biological and geographical science.

By studying the chemistry of an unorthodox set of Brazilian diamonds, a team of researchers have discovered startling new information about the carbon cycle and the theory of plate tectonics.

HOUSTON, March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Texas Rare Earth Resources Corp.(OTCQB:TRER) has completed analysis of 1103 drill samples from the 1984-88 drilling program conducted by Cabot Corporation and Cyprus Minerals.