It is a mineral used to make types of plaster which coat our homes, schools and offices - and in Cumbria sits the world's deepest gypsum mine. Outside the small village of Long Marton, against the ...

thanks to a new study of Earthly microbial fossils embedded in the mineral gypsum that was produced when the Mediterranean Ocean dried up over 5 million years ago. Mars was once wet, with rivers ...

briny lakes surrounded by mile after mile of salt and gypsum. Today, scientists call this the Messinian Salinity Crisis: in the dying days of the Miocene epoch, most of the Mediterranean died.