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Geology News
Mexico Current Events

If you missed the documentary on the enormous crystals within Mexico’s Naica mine, you can read the story at National Geographic’s website. There is also a short video and a photo slideshow of the amazing cave. One of the explorers appropriately described their experience as “if you are a tiny insect in a geode”.

Three scientists explored the “Crystal Cave of Giants” in Mexico’s Naica Mountain for a National Geographic documentary. The cave has some of the largest gypsum crystals in the world - some the size of redwood trees.

USGS reports that a magnitude 6.5 earthquake occurred at 2:41 local time offshore of Chiapas, Mexico, near the Mexico-Guatemala border.

Early news from the Associated Press says that there were no reports of injuries or damage.

Hurricane Norbert continues in the eastern Pacific as a Category 3 hurricane, expected to hit Baha on Saturday. You can access track maps and public advisories at the National Hurricane Center. Earth Observatory has a good satellite image of the storm acquired on October 8.

The National Hurricane Center is calling Hurricane Norbert an “extremely dangerous Category Four hurricane”. It is now in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Mexico. It is expected to track towards Baja California where it could make landfall late Friday night or Saturday morning.

National Geographic has a photo gallery for Mexico’s Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) which contains some of the largest crystals in the world, including translucent gypsum crystals up to 36 feet long.

An emergency at Presidio, Texas has workers sandbagging to build a dam that will hold back the water that might be released from a Mexican reservoir. Parts of the town was flooded recently and more water is expected to be released from the Luis Leon Reservoir because of heavy rains.

“Mexico City once topped lists of places with the worst air pollution in the world. Although efforts to curb emissions have improved the situation, tiny particles called aerosols still clog the air.” Quoted from the NASA release.

Archaeologists working on the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico have discovered an underground labyrinth believed to have been built by the Mayas and which may have played an important role in their elaborate rituals.

Underwater archaeologists may have discovered the oldest human skeleton ever found in the Americas. It is a female skeleton thought to be about 13,600 years old. The shape of the skull does not agree with the northern Asia origin for the earliest people in the Americas.

Tropical Storm Julio passed over the southern tip of Baja California today. It is expected to track up the Baja Peninsula and weaken as it interacts with mountainous terrain.

Associated Press story on Tropical Storm Julio.

Hurricane Dolly is expected to gain strength and dump heavy rain as it comes ashore on Wednesday morning. The path of the storm is expected to track right over Brownsville, Texas and 15 to 20 inches of rain is expected to cause flooding there.

Archaeologists are investigating a cave system about twenty feet below the Pyramid of the Sun at the Teotihuacan archaeological site on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Philip Klotzbach and William Gray of Colorado State University: “We foresee a well above-average Atlantic basin tropical cyclone season in 2008….. We anticipate an above-average probability of United States major hurricane landfall.”

“A dust storm struck central Mexico on March 18, 2008, and winds transported the dust into southern Texas. Dust from Mexico mixed in the atmosphere with rain showers, raining mud over the city and creating what some described as “a car wash owner’s dream,” according to San Antonio’s KSAT.com.” Quoted from the Earth Observatory Report.

The world produces about 100 tons of germanium per year. The high demand for high tech gadgets and defense technology pushed the price of germanium to an all time high of about $1300/kilogram. Prospectors are searching northern Mexico to find new sources for this rare metal.

Here is a list of the news items that were most popular with our readers for February 2008…

• New Duck-Billed Dinosaur Discovered in Mexico
• Coal Through a Microscope
• Volcanoes May Have Caused the Little Ice Ages
• Plastic: The Scourge of Sea Life
• Sir Charles Lyell’s Elements of Geology
• Photos from the Tucson Gem and Minerals Show
• Meteorites from Mercury
• Heated Debate Over the Definition of a Planet
• Theories on Grand Canyon Formation
• Who Buys High End Mineral Specimens?

Several minor to small earthquakes have occurred today in the Baja California, Mexico area. The largest was about magnitude 5.0. Up to intensity V shaking has been repored in the Mexicali area.

Researchers have found a new species of duck-billed dinosaur in the Coahuila region of Mexico. The new plant-eating hadrosaur has been named Velafrons coahuilensis.

A moderate earthquake occurred this morning in southern Mexico. It was a 6.4 magnitude event that occurred at a depth of about 119 kilometers. The epicenter was about 37 km (23 miles) northwest of Arriaga, Chiapas, Mexico. News reports indicate little damage and no loss of life.

In November a major landslide in southern Mexico blocked the Grijalva River, the second largest by discharge in the country and buried the town of San Juan de Grijalva. On Tuesday, Mexican authorities opened a canal through the landslide debris.

Popocatepetl Volcano, a stratovolcano about 40 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City erupted ash and steam on Saturday. It is the second highest volcano in Mexico and periodically stirs to evacuate local people.

Here’s a Landsat image showing Popocatepetl (volcanic cone with small plume in southeast corner of image) and Mexico City (purple area with a faint street grid just northwest of center).

A large mudslide buried parts of San Juan Grijalva village in southern Chiapas, Mexico. About 100 houses were reported buried and 30 people were reported as missing.

A week of heavy rain has flooded large areas of Mexico. Especially hard hit was the state of Tabasco which is reported to have been 70% to 80% under water - and many homes were flooded to their rooftops.

An offshore platform in the Gulf of Mexico was knocked over by eight meter high waves in a heavy storm. Most crew members were able to scramble into life rafts but some of the rafts broke up in the storm. Nineteen workers were lost.

USGS Image

Mexico is the second largest supplier of oil to the United States. However, it’s output is falling because the fields are being depleted with no replacments, and sabotage is interrupting the supply chain. The US will need to find a new supplier to replace this decline in Mexican oil.

NASA Image

Hurricane Lorenzo is expected to hit the Gulf Coast of Mexico on Friday morning. It is presently a Category 1 storm and is expected to strengthen before it makes landfall.

NOAA Image

Hurricane Dean lost some of its steam passing over the Yucatan Peninsula, dropping in strength to a Category 1. However it now will move over the Bay of Campeche where it will draw strength from the very warm waters there. Vulnerable there are over 100 oil platforms and three major oil exporting ports.

NOAA Image

The predicted path of Hurricane Dean as shown by the National Hurricane Center is crossing Yucatan on Tuesday and making landfall on the Gulf Coast of Mexico on Wednesday afternoon.

Instead of creeping toward Mexico City at about one inch per year - the expected speed from plate tectonic theory - the region near Acapulco moved in the opposite direction for six months and sped up by four times, said CU-Boulder aerospace engineering Professor Kristine Larson.

A landslide in Mexico buried a bus traveling on a remote mountain road. Thirty-two people are confirmed dead.

J. A. Soriano Photo

Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin are trying to better understand how the cenotes of Mexico formed and how they evolve over time. At the same time scientists from Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh are pushing the envelope in robotic mapping and navigation.

Electrical Resistivity at Poza Seca

Marc Airhart sends his third field report from Mexico. He explains how some sinkholes have slowly closed, sealing an underground lake below that might contain forms of life that are capable of living without sunlight or oxygen. These living communities have been isolated for thousands of years and may have evolved along paths different than their current relatives that have continued living at the surface.

Skylight at Caverna Cuarteles

Marc Airhart sends his second field report from Mexico. The team went on a field trip to Caverna Cuarteles, a large dry cave with interesting formations and insects. In this report he explains how many of the caves in Mexico are thought to have formed “from the bottom up” by rising volcanic waters. This is in contrast to waters moving “from the top down.” - which is the typical method of cave formation.

Marc Airhart and DEPTHX

Marc Airhart sends his first field report from El Zacatón Cenote, Mexico. There a team of scientists are exploring the world’s deepest water-filled sinkhole. Today the DEPTHX robot made the first ever map of the bottom of the El Zacatón Cenote using its sonar sensors.

Stone Aerospace Iimage

Next week researchers in Mexico will be exploring El Zacatón, the world’s deepest water-filled sinkhole using DEPTHX, the world’s only cave-diving robot. Marc Airhart, science writer at the Jackson School of Geosciences of the University of Texas at Austin, will be sending updates that will be posted right here on the Geology.com News page. Other scientists participating in this project are from Carnegie Mellon University, Colorado School of Mines, Southwest Research Institute and Stone Aerospace.