ETH researchers have refuted the assumption that a huge store of dissolved organic carbon in the ocean was partly responsible for the ice ages and the emergence of complex life between 1,000 and 541 million years ago. 

Applying a new method for analysing iron oxide grains, they were able – for the first time - to directly determine the dissolved organic carbon content of the ocean at that time. 

The measurements show that the amount of dissolved organic carbon in the oceans at that time must have been 90 to 99 per cent less than today. 

These findings call for new explanations as to how ecological and biogeochemical evolution are related.

A study by the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo offers insights into how microbial life may have functioned during a critical phase in Earth's history, when oxygen was only beginning to accumulate in the atmosphere. By studying iron-rich hot springs in Japan that mirror the conditions of early, low-oxygen oceans, researchers discovered microbial communities sustained by iron metabolism, supported through a relationship with oxygen-producing photosynthetic microbes.

What happens when cows graze, carbon vanishes from soil, and climate change looms large? Scientists have a plan—and it involves a black, brainy material called biochar that’s transforming how we think about soil health in some of the planet’s most delicate landscapes. A powerful new study—published on July 7, 2025, in Carbon Research—has cracked the code on how to protect and even boost soil carbon in karst ecosystems, the stunning limestone-rich regions that stretch across southern China and beyond.