Atacama Desert's extreme aridity initiated 20m years earlier than previously thought
Published: 2 June 2026
Researchers from SUERC Centre for the Isotope Sciences are co-authors of a study which casts new light on the history of the Earth’s driest region, the Atacama Desert in Chile. A collaborative study with University of Cologne, recently published in Nature Communications, provides compelling evidence that the extreme aridity in the hyperarid core of the Atacama Desert began over 40 million years ago - significantly earlier than previously assumed.