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A magnitude 6.9 earthquake off the coast of Northern California struck Sunday night, on the 9th of March. It was the largest on the West Coast since the 7.2 Baja California quake in 2010 and it was followed by a series of at least 13 aftershocks, the largest of which had magnitude of 4.6, according […]
The Stonehenge is one of the most impressive and mysterious constructions left behind by our ancestors. Now, scientists have found the exact source of Stonehenge’s smaller bluestones: over 200 km away from Stonehenge. The stones’ composition revealed that they came from a relatively nearby outcrop about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) away from the site originally. […]
Using two different dating technique, geologists have come across what they believe to be the oldest piece of Earth discovered thus far. The zircon crystal, found on a sheep ranch in Western Australia , was confirmed to be 4.4 billion years old and offers tantalizing clues and insights on how our planet must have looked like in […]
Some 252 million years ago, 96 percent of marine species and 70 percent of life on land became extinct following a yet unconfirmed series of cataclysmic events. Around this time, billions and billions of organisms were killed and life on Earth faced its most dire moments. This is known as the end-Permian extinction, and many theories […]
We could exploit energy from deep down in the earth, as a report from a geothermal borehole suggests. The project developed under the name of Icelandic Deep Drilling Project (also known as IDDP), and the shafts have been drilled to almost five kilometers deep, with the purpose of harnessing the heat in the volcanic bedrock […]
During the Mesozoic, dinosaurs weren’t just roaming the land – giant reptiles, such as mosasaurs and ichthyosaurs, ruled the seas. But while scientists have a fairly good idea about how they looked like, until now, they had no idea what colors they featured. Paleontologists conducted new analysis at the SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden […]
Imagine salmon in reverse: long-snouted Bandringa sharks migrated downstream from freshwater swamps to a tropical coastline to spawn 310 million years ago – leaving behind a fossil nursery, which researchers found. The bandringa sharks The surprising conclusion was drawn by University of Michigan paleontologist Lauren Sallan and a University of Chicago colleague; they analyzed every […]
Cats, dogs, as well as many well known and loved wild animals such as seals, lions, tigers and bears trace their ancestry to primitive carnivorous mammals dating back to 55 million years ago, at the beginning of a time period called the Eocene. A study, published in the most recent issue of the Journal of […]
A cluster of 18 flowering plants from the Cretaceous (100 million years ago) has been found preserved in amber Among the flowers, one shows the earliest reproduction of flowering plants Based on microscopic imaging, paleontologists conclude that the pollination mechanism has remained virtually unchanged Amber is fossilized tree resin, valued as a gem since prehistoric […]
Scientists have developed a new catalogue of earthquake lights, glows sometimes reported during the seismic shaking, and sometimes even before it. The phenomenon has been reported by eyewitnesses for centuries, but only recently did scientists start taking them seriously. The science of glowing earthquakes Even though they have been described both before and during the […]
A huge megaflood may have carved the U-shaped canyons we can now see in Idaho some 46,000 years ago. The similarities suggest that the same phenomenon occurred on Mars as well were similar geological formations were found. After studying several U-shaped canyons in south-central Idaho, US, geologists at Caltech propose that these characteristic formations were […]
In 1959, an American geologist built a rock cairn 1.2 meters away from this glacier; he left a note, asking whoever finds it to measure the distance to the glacier. Today, that distance has grown up to 101.5 meters. Researchers who found the incredibly creative and unusual note say it’s highly unexpected for a scientist […]
A song of ice and fire Antarctica is split in two different areas: East Antarctica and West Antarctica – and East Antarctica wears the pants in this relationship: it’s pushing West Antarctica around – literally. Since the Western part is losing weight due to melting and ice loss (billions of tons of ice per year), […]
Dating rocks is not really something new – it’s been conducted on Earth for decades now; researchers have also determined the age of rocks from outer space, but the experiments always took place on Earth. Now, for the first time, this procedure took place on Mars. The work, led by geochemist Ken Farley of the […]
The Permian extinction was the biggest extinction ever, killing 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates Possible causes include: impact, loss of oxygen and volcanic eruptions Researchers tested the validity of the last hypothesis, finding it likely The biggest extinction – ever MIT Researchers believe that rain as acidic as undiluted lemon […]
When herbivorous dinosaurs went to sleep, they had bad dreams about Tyrannosaurs. But what where Tyrannosaurs afraid of? If you’re thinking “Nothing”, then you’re really wrong. A new species of carnivorous dinosaur (one of the three largest ever discovered in North America) competed with them 98 million years ago – the newly discovered species, Siats […]
Chesapeake Bay is one of the few oceanic impact craters on Earth When the huge impact took place ~35 million years ago, it sealed the ancient oceanic water The water has remained virtually unchanged since then A new study published in Nature provides chemical, isotopic and physical evidence that groundwater found at about 1.5 […]
Most fossils are very fragile, difficult to handle and transport Researchers conducted CT scans on fossils still trapped in sedimentary material, creating 3D models The models were then 3D printed – an accurate, non invasive method to replicate fossils for schools, museums and other researchers Doctors and dinosaurs Being a paleontologist and working […]
An international team of researchers led by Ralf Tappert, from the University of Innsbruck, reconstructed the composition of Earth’s atmosphere of the last 220 million years by analyzing modern and fossil plant resins. Their results indicate that atmospheric oxygen was considerably lower in Earth’s geological past than previously assumed – providing valuable information about current […]
To say that finding evidence of how life on Earth was 3.5 billion years ago is hard would be an understatement. Reconstructing the rise of life in its early stages is a monumental challenge – the evidence is only preserved in Earth’s oldest sedimentary rocks, and sedimentary rocks of that age are very hard to […]
A study published earlier this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy correlated 93 small earthquakes in Texas (near a city called Snyder) with underground injection of large volumes of gas, primarily carbon dioxide, in a technique called CO2 flooding. Not fracking, but flooding CO2 flooding is a technique that doesn’t refer to extraction, […]
A laudable, ambitious initiative is nearing fruition: the US$90-million Transportable Array, a moveable grid of seismometers that blankets America. Since 2004, the set of 400 seismometers, loaded on trucks, have gradually marched, from the Pacific coast across the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains and is finally reaching the eastern coastline. Whenever they arrive at […]
A giant platypus fossil, measuring more than 1m long (3ft) was discovered in Queensland, Australia. The animal lived 5-15 million years ago, as paleontologists explain in the journal Vertebrate Paleontology. Until now, the oldest fossil was dated 100.000 years ago. As if the evolutionary status of the platypus wasn’t extraordinarily complicated as it is, this […]
A group of paleontologists believe that the same event that killed off the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago also caused a widespread extinction in bee populations. Currently, the widely accepted theory is that an asteroid or comet struck our planet 66 million years ago (the Cretaceous-Paleogene event, or K-Pg event), the impact and its […]
Finding mosquitoes trapped in amber is truly exciting, but it’s not really unique – there have been several reported cases all around the world, and some people are even selling such samples (which I don’t think is a good thing, but that’s another discussion). But finding a fossilized mosquito in sediment… now that’s unique! It […]
For the first time, researchers have found evidence of a comet entering Earth’s atmosphere and exploding, obliterating everything in its path before ultimately crashing down into the Sahara. Comets and asteroids Many people will probably be asking themselves “Didn’t we find comet evidence on Earth before?”. No, not really – if you did wondeer that, […]
Even an area so studied as Hawaii sometimes yields surprises – a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and the University of Rhode Island (URI) changes the very foundation of how the Hawaii islands were formed: it is the eruptions […]
A tiny chip already used in smartphones for the orientation of your screen could serve to create a real-time urban seismic network, easily increasing the amount of strong motion data collected during a large earthquake, helping responders know where the most damage has been done and where the strongest intervention is needed. Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) […]
A few days ago, we were telling you about the Pakistan earthquake which created a new island just off the shore. The magnitude-7.7 earthquake was likely centered on a southern strand of the Chaman Fault, and in the hours after it, a new island suddenly rose in the nearby shallow waters. The Chaman Fault is […]
This defensive strategy has been used for a very long time, but if you were to take a guess, how long would do you think that time was? A thousand years, ten thousand years, one million years? According to a new fossil unearthed by paleontologists, the answer is at least 510 million years! Trilobites and […]
Paleontologists have scratched the surface of what appears to be a very promising dinosaur site near the Arctic circle, in Alaska. When these dinosaurs roamed the Earth, they stepped in mud; their footprints quickly filled with sand, and were preserved in the form we see them today, like blubs with toes. In July, the scientists […]
The Earthquake A major earthquake hit a remote part of Pakistan (near the border with Iran), claiming 45 lives and prompting a new island to rise from the sea just off the country’s southern coast. According to the USGS, the earthquake has a magnitude of 7.7 and tremors were felt all the way to New […]
A magnitude 8.3 earthquake that struck deep beneath the Sea of Okhotsk on May 24, 2013 still poses a lot of questions to geophysicists. At a depth of about 609 kilometers (378 miles), the kind of rupture which generates an earthquake of this magnitude should just not happen. The vast majority of significant earthquakes takes […]
Could the Yellowstone supervolcano be waking up? In his 53 years of monitoring seismic activity in and around the Yellowstone Caldera, Bob Smith has never witnessed two simultaneous earthquake swarms; now, the Utah University geophysicist has seen not two, but three such swarms. “It’s very remarkable,” Smith said. “How does one swarm relate to another? […]
Instead of digging through layers of rocks, a few paleontologists focused their efforts on ‘digging’ through museum collection instead – and their efforts were quite successful. Their unique approach led to the discovery of never-before seen structures, which they think are something called dino-fuzz. The fluffy structures trapped in the small bits of ancient amber […]
When the Sahara comes to mind, lush greenery and gorgeous, fast flowing waters might be the last scenery that crosses you. Not too long ago (geological frame), however, the region known today as the Sahara may have been crossed by three giant rivers the size of the Nile, according to a recent palaeohydrological model made […]
Geophysicists trying to understand hotspot volcanoes have used a process known as seismic tomography and detected previously unknown finger-like structures of heat, some thousands of km long. The vast majority of volcanoes arises at contact zones between tectonic plates. However, another, entirely different type of volcano exists: hotspots are volcanic regions which can appear even […]
Land clearing and human habitation put significant pressure on local species – combine this with globalization and a general recklessness of the population, and you get a big, negative impact (both environmental and economic) from invasive plants. But invasive plants aren’t something new – they’ve been around for hundreds of millions of years. Scientists have […]
A 350 million year old fossilized scorpion has become the world’s oldest known land animal to have ever walked the supercontinent Gondwana. Ancient history It’s 350 million years ago – take a moment to ponder that. Take a long human lifespan of 100 years, and multiply it by 100, and again by 100 – now […]
Geophysical data from Greenland have revealed the existence of a canyon comparable in size with the Grand Canyon beneath the ice sheet. The canyon has the characteristics of a winding river channel and is over 750 km long and it is often as deep as 800 m. This immense feature is thought to predate humanity […]
A surprisingly diverse range of life forms exists deep in the oceanic crust, but they live at an extremely slow pace. Long lived bacteria, which reproduce only once in 10.000 years, have been found in rocks 2.5km below the ocean floor, rocks which are 100 million years old. Viruses and fungi have also been found […]
A fossil of a small, forest-floor-dwelling animal called Megaconus puts a big question mark on the evolution of mammals – it suggests that its group predated animals, while another one, from its tree dwelling ‘cousing’ Arboroharamiya shows the group belonged to the mammals. The two fossils have paleontologists scratching their heads, not knowing where to […]
A new, unusual species of dinosaur has been discovered in the deserts of Utah. The 5m-long is a member of the triceratops family, and as fierce as they may look, this dinosaur was a herbivore. The huge ‘nose’ and exceptionally long horns are unlike any other dinosaurs previously described, which explains its name – Nasutoceratops […]
The king of all predators, the godfather of his time, la creme de la creme – Tyrannosaurus Rex (T. Rex) was the ultimate predator… or was he? When Jurassic Park came out, even though the cinema crowd went wild as T. Rex smashed and ate velociraptors (and the occasional human), at the time, there was […]
Lots of volcanoes erupted in 2009 – but one of them really screamed out. Its unique howls provide a glimpse into the very heart of the volcano, and also in some unexplained processes that accompany an eruption. It’s not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption – it’s quite common. As […]
A trio of papers recently published in Science link hydraulic fracking and geothermal energy production to numerous earthquakes in the United States. Most of these events have been relatively small, with a magnitude of under 5.0, but a few were quite significant – including the 5.6 event that hit Oklahoma on 6 November 2011, damaging […]
Scuba divers have discovered a primeval underwater forest off the coast of Alabama – a cypress forest which was incredibly well preserved for over 50.000 years. The bald cypress forest was buried under ocean sediments (almost certainly sand), isolated from oxygen (which is the main enemy of preservation), thus preventing them from rotting; however, the underwater […]
Rock permeability in the geologic fault that unleashed China’s 2008 quake shows that fractures mend quicker than was thought. A devastating earthquake The 2008 Sichuan earthquake struck at 02:28:01 PM China Standard Time, with a magnitude of 8. It came as quite a surprise, as the area is not particularly active from a seismic point […]
More and more discoveries seem to hint at a watery past for Mars. Now, NASA research shows that hunks of frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) may glide down some Martian sand dunes on cushions of gas similar to miniature hovercraft, plowing away as they go down. This study could explain one of the mysteries of […]
Typically on Earth, days usually have a temperature maximum somewhere after lunch, and a minimum during the night. But for Mars, things are pretty different: “We see a temperature maximum in the middle of the day, but we also see a temperature maximum a little after midnight,” said Armin Kleinboehl of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory […]
