Ask your kid what happened to the dinosaurs, and he or she will likely tell you that an asteroid killed them all. But ask how dinosaurs rose to prominence and you'll likely get a blank stare. Even many paleontologists may have little to say about the subject. But now, as EARTH explores in a feature in the February issue, new fossil discoveries are revealing the backstory of the rise of dinosaurs.

Where to next in the search for oil and gas? EARTH examines several possible new frontiers - including the Arctic, the Falkland Islands, the Levant, Trinidad and Tobago and Sudan - where oil and gas exploration are starting to take hold. One of those places, Sudan, is in the news for other reasons: South Sudan voted yesterday on whether to secede from North Sudan.

Over the past five decades, OPEC has earned a reputation for being a powerful cartel that controls the world's oil production and prices - but there are limits to OPEC's influence and wealth. In fact, many OPEC countries face grave problems, which are to some extent the result of their oil-income dependence. EARTH examines OPEC's past, current and future place in this world. Will OPEC continue to control the planet's oil for the next 50 years?

America has made great strides in recent years to reduce carbon emissions by increasing efficiency and turning to other, low or non-carbon energy sources. Meanwhile, carbon emissions in China have grown dramatically during that same time. EARTH looks at this disparity and asks the difficult questions about who is to blame when the coal China is burning is imported from "cleaner" countries and the emissions are produced to manufacture goods exported back to places with lower emissions.

To celebrate the new year, the American Geological Institute (AGI) is offering deep discounts of up to 75% off on some of its most popular book titles for purchases made by January 31st, 2011.

Author Stephen M. Testa will hold a book signing for "One Man's Planet: Earth in Today's Political Culture," published by the American Geological Institute (AGI) at the 2010 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California.

In light of global concerns about emissions and climate change, the aviation industry is cleaning up its act. The industry is reducing emissions, decreasing fuel use, increasing efficiency and developing new technologies to alter its environmental impacts. The November issue of EARTH magazine focuses on the changes to learn how the aviation industry is using synthetic fuels and engineering, and even altering common flight plans to keep up with changing protocols and dwindling resources.

The American Geological Institute's (AGI) Glossary of Geology, 5th Edition is now available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad in Apple's App Store. The Glossary of Geology app brings all 40,000 authoritative definitions of the vocabulary of the geosciences to an easy-to use, searchable, fast, and portable format.

The American Geological Institute (AGI) is pleased to announce Mr. G. Warfield "Skip" Hobbs as its new President. He will be inducted at the Geological Society of America Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado.

The American Geological Institute (AGI) welcomes three new Executive Committee members: Wayne D. Pennington, President-Elect; Berry H. (Nick) Tew, Jr., Secretary; and David W. Bieber, Member-at-Large.