An article on the ScienceNews website titled “Stop-and-go plate tectonics” explores how the process of plate tectonics might have started on the early Earth.
“On April 10, 1815, Tambora Volcano produced the largest eruption in recorded history. [...] Enough ash was put into the atmosphere from the April 10 eruption to reduce incident sunlight on the Earth’s surface, causing global cooling, which resulted in the 1816 “year without a summer.” Quote from a NASA Earth Observatory press release.
“Conventional wisdom holds that during the Mesozoic Era, mammals were small creatures that held on at life’s edges. But at least one mammal group, rodent-like creatures called multituberculates, actually flourished during the last 20 million years of the dinosaurs’ reign and survived their extinction 66 million years ago.” Quoted from the University of Washington press release.
The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has a new documentary and traveling exhibition titled “Titanoboa: Monster Snake”. The largest known snake lived about 60 million years ago in what is now Colombia, weighed over one ton and grew to a length of up to 48 feet.
Jessica Ball has some photos of a recent fossil collecting trip along the shoreline of Lake Erie. They found some nice corals, trilobites and brachiopods.
“When Sifrhippus sandae, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale. It weighed in at around 12 pounds–and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia.” Quoted from the NSF press release.
“Atmospheric oxygen really took off on our planet about 2.4 billion years ago during the Great Oxygenation Event.” Quoted from the Rutgers press release.
Fifty-five million years ago, Earth underwent a very rapid global warming event. About a third of mammal species responded with a significant reduction in size during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum , some by as much as one-half.
“Unexpected new findings by a University of Maryland team of geochemists show that some portions of the Earth’s mantle (the rocky layer between Earth’s metallic core and crust) formed when the planet was much smaller than it is now.” Quoted from the University of Maryland press release.
In northern China, researchers have found a fossilcoal swamp that was quickly buried and preserved by a fall of volcanic ash approximately 300 million years ago.
William Fritz and Robert Thomas have completed a second edition of the popular Roadside Geology of Yellowstone Country. This 6″x9″ paperback has 311 pages that are packed with detailed information about Yellowstone Geology.
The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report.
A collection of over 300 specimens collected by Charles Darwin and his associates – then forgotten for generations has be rediscovered at the British Geological Survey.
Every day Google celebrates a famous person or event and today they honor Nicolas Steno, one of the early pioneers of geology. The doodle features rock layers spelling GOOGLE and when they are clicked it does a google search for “Nicolas Steno”. Check it out, it will be gone tomorrow.
The PLoSone online journal has an article about Acamptonectes densus, an ichthyosaur that survived the Jurasic-Cretaceous extinction event and suggests that the event had little impact on ichthyosaurs.
“The appearance of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere probably did not occur as a single event, but as a long series of starts and stops, according to an international team of researchers who investigated rock cores from the FAR DEEP project.” Quoted from the Penn State press release.
Based upon the proportions of two vertebrae and a femur of Alamosaurus sanjuanensis found in New Mexico, researchers believe that the bones are from the largest dinosaur ever found in North America.
NASA has a new article that explains that over the past 20 million years magnetic reversals have occurred every 200,000 to 300,000 years but it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal.
Researchers at Michigan Tech, the University of Rochester and Yale University have determined that Earth’s core could be at least 1.2 billion years older than previously thought.
An article on the SignOnSanDiego.com website explains what Earth might have been like during the extinction that occurred at the end of the Permian which wiped out most of Earth’s species.
Researchers in southern Italy have found teeth associated with shell beads and other ornaments that date to between 43,000 and 45,000 years ago. These are older than any other physical remains found anywhere in Europe.
David M. Wilson, a polar historian, has published a collection of images with descriptions from Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910-1913 Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole. The New York Times has a photo gallery featuring some of the images.
Some of the most spectacular Eocene fossils are found in the Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming where fish, insects, plants and animals were preserved in intermountain lakes while the Rocky Mountains were still growing.
“Although Lake Agassiz is gone, questions about its origin and disappearance remain. Answers to those questions may provide clues to our future climate.” Quoted from the University of Cincinnati news release.
“The track site, found in southwest Arkansas, covers an area of about two football fields and contains the fossilized tracks of several species.” Quoted from the University of Arkansas news release.
“Scientists believe that the additional carbon dioxide played a key role in warming the planet and melting the continental ice sheets. They have long hypothesized that the source of the gas was the deep ocean.” Quoted from the University of Michigan news release.
The SciNEWS website has a new collection of resources that guide teachers in preparing learning activities for students that feature new research findings about some of the oldest-know feathers. These are based in part on an assemblage of Late Cretaceous dinosaur and bird feathers discovered in Canadian amber.
“A 10,000-year-old weather report? Come on. That’s going a tad deep into the archives, isn’t it? Yet, that’s the untold story that caves on a South Pacific island are expected to reveal to a group of University of Alabama geologists.” Quoted from the University of Alabama research news.
“Research at the University of Liverpool has found that periods of rapid fluctuation in temperature coincided with the emergence of the first distant relatives of human beings and the appearance and spread of stone tools.” Quoted from the University of Liverpool news release.
“An international team of scientists has provided new insights into the processes behind the evolution of the planet by demonstrating how salty water and gases transfer from the atmosphere into the Earth’s interior.” Quoted form the University of Melborne news release.
“Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with help from an amateur fossil hunter in College Park, Maryland, have described the fossil of an armored dinosaur hatchling.” Quoted from John Hopkins news release.
“Observations from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs is not likely the culprit.” Quoted from the NASA press release.
“University of Pennsylvania evolutionary biologists have resolved a long-standing paleontological problem by reconciling the fossil record of species diversity with modern DNA samples.” Quoted from the University of Pennsylvania press release.
Secrets from the age of the dinosaurs are usually revealed by fossilized bones, but a University of Alberta research team has turned up a treasure trove of late Cretaceous feathers, which have been discovered trapped in tree resin.
“Now a new study, led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, reveals that the ancient deep ocean was not only devoid of oxygen but also rich in iron, a key biological nutrient for nearly a billion years longer than previously thought–right through a key evolutionary interval that culminated in the first rise of animals.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation news release.
“New evidence of sea-level oscillations during a warm period that started about 125,000 years ago raises the possibility of a similar scenario if the planet continues its more recent warming trend, says a research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.” Quoted from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution press release.
“Floating rafts of volcanic pumice could have played a significant role in the origins of life on Earth, scientists from Oxford University and the University of Western Australia have suggested.” Quoted from the University of Oxford news release.
“In research that will help address a long-running debate and apparent contradiction between short- and long-term evolutionary change, scientists have discovered that although evolution is a constant and sometimes rapid process, the changes that hit and stick tend to take a long time.” Quoted from the Oregon State University news release.
“A well-preserved fossil discovered in northeast China provides new information about the earliest ancestors of most of today’s mammal species–the placental mammals.” Quoted form the National Science Foundation press release.
“Two ancient types of harvestmen, or ‘daddy long legs,’ which skittered around forests more than 300 million years ago, are revealed in new three-dimensional virtual fossil models published today in the journal Nature Communications.” Quoted from the Imperial College London news release.
Researchers in Australia have found microscopic fossils of what are thought to be 3.4 billion-year-old anaerobic bacteria. Analysis of nearby pyrite grains show evidence of metabolism that implies that the microbes were processing sulfur.
A new study described in the online journal Nature used isotopic dating techniques to revise the age of a class of lunar rocks known as ferroan anorthosite. They suggest that the moon might have formed about 200 million years later than previously believed.
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