news 2018

Wednesday 7 November 2018 officially launches the European Plate Observing System (EPOS) for the pooling and streamlining of data and services of all kinds for the study of our planet. This initiative, for which the CNRS and BRGM are working together with the French Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, in part aims to better understand the mechanisms behind earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

By studying calcium in fossil remains in deposits in Morocco and Niger, researchers have been able to reconstruct the food chains of the past, thus explaining how so many predators could coexist in the dinosaurs' time.

An international team of researchers 1 , including a CNRS researcher at the department of Écologie et Dynamique des Systèmes Anthropisés (CNRS / Université de Picardie Jules Verne) has observed an acceleration in the increase of biodiversity on mountain peaks in Europe.

Fields, streets and cities, but also forests planted in rank and file, and dead straight rivers: humans shape nature to better suit their purposes, and not only since the onset of industrialization. Such influences are well documented in the Amazonian rainforest. On the other hand, the influence of humans was debated in Central Africa where major interventions seem to have occurred there 2,600 years ago: Potsdam geoscientist Yannick Garcin and his team have published a report on their findings in the journal PNAS.