Month: June 2010
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Saxon Princess
Via the Windsor Star: Archeologists have hailed as a “glorious moment” the discovery in Germany of the mortal remains of Saxon princess Eadgyth, who married the future Holy Roman Emperor Otto I more than 1,000 years ago. Following detailed analysis, an international team of over 30 researchers confirmed a tomb found in Magdeburg Cathedral in…
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Climate Change 2.7 Million Years Ago
Via National Science Foundation: … a research team led by Brown University has established that the climate in the tropics over at least the last 2.7 million years changed in lockstep with the cyclical spread and retreat of ice sheets thousands of miles away in the Northern Hemisphere. The findings appear to cement the link…
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Canyon Making
Via PhysOrg: In the summer of 2002, a week of heavy rains in Central Texas caused Canyon Lake — the reservoir of the Canyon Dam — to flood over its spillway and down the Guadalupe River Valley in a planned diversion to save the dam from catastrophic failure. The flood, which continued for six weeks,…
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Particle Physics For Geology
Via Princeton University: An international team including scientists from Princeton University has detected subatomic particles deep within the Earth’s interior. The discovery could help geologists understand how reactions taking place in the planet’s interior affect events on the surface such as earthquakes and volcanoes.
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Snowball Earth
Via Futurity: New evidence uncovered by a team of Princeton geologists suggests that an episode 720 million years ago called “snowball Earth,” which may have covered the continents and oceans in a thick sheet of ice, produced a dramatic change in the carbon cycle.
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Australopithecus afarensis
Via Discovery OnLine: Scientists may have found the great, great, great, etc., grandfather of the famous fossil Lucy. A new partial skeleton of an early hominid known as Australopithecus afarensis was discovered in a mud flat of the Afar region of Ethiopia.
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Western Canadian Fossils
Via MSNBC: These storms could also help explain why fossils are so abundant in the badlands of western Canada overall, “and why they are often found preserved so exquisitely,” Eberth said. Coastal floodplains such as those seen in modern Bangladesh can cover vast areas, with flooding killing hundreds of thousands of livestock, not to mention…
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Mammoths and Mastodons Exhibit at Field Museum
Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age Exhibition runs March 5, 2010 – September 6, 2010 at the Field Museum.
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Water Present At Birth of Earth?
Via Science Daily: Tiny variations in the isotopic composition of silver in meteorites and Earth rocks are helping scientists put together a timetable of how our planet was assembled beginning 4.568 billion years ago. The new study, published in the journal Science, indicates that water and other key volatiles may have been present in at…
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Coprolite Mystery in Indiana
Via ScienceBlogs: Time and again I have stressed that every fossil bone tells a story, and, in a different way, so do coprolites. They are small snapshots of a moment in the life of an organism, often preserving bits of their meals, and while they may not get top billing in museum halls, they are…
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Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS)
About COPUS: The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) is a grassroots effort whose goal is to engage sectors of the public in science to increase their understanding of the nature of science and its value to society. A key objective of COPUS is to create new forums for communication and to develop…
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Ancient Icebox Found
Via Xinhuanet: Archeologists in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province said Wednesday they had found a primitive “icebox” dating back at least 2,000 years…
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New Estrucan Home Found
Via a blog called Archaelogy News Network: An ancient Etruscan home dating back more than 2,400 years has been discovered outside Grosseto in central Italy. Hailed as an exceptional find, the luxury home was uncovered at an archeological site at Vetulonia, 200 kilometres north of Rome.
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Geology Museum 125 Year Anniversary
Via KCAU TV The Museum of Geology at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology is celebrating its 125th anniversary on Saturday. On June 12, 1885, Gilbert Bailey made a gift to the Rapid City school that laid the foundation for the museum. Bailey was in charge of the Harney Peak Tin Mining and…
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New Field Trip – Register by June 19
Update 6/21 – Field Trip Closed. Just announced: We have been invited to attend a ZRS field trip to Rochester Minnesota on June 26, 2010 We have until June 19 to respond. ZRS GUIDED FIELDTRIPS 2010 – FILLMORE COUNTY, MINNESOTA Saturday, June 26th We will be collecting unique marine fossil shells and corals from the…
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Mesoamericans First Polymer Scientists
Via Discovery News: Ancient Mesoamerican peoples manufactured rubber from latex some 3,500 years before the modern invention of vulcanization and even compounded it for different applications, says new research from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology research team….
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Geologist Shortage In Copper Industry
Via Geology.com: A shortage of geologists and other skilled workers in the copper industry could severely limit how quickly companies can increase production when demand begins to rise.
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In England, Geology Outreach
Over 4,000 primary schools in Ireland, both North and South, have received activity booklets containing geological exercises and games as well as four large poster for display in the classroom as part of an educational outreach project co-ordinated by Dr Patrick Wyse Jackson, Senior Lecturer in Trinity College’s Department of Geology and Curator of TCD’s…
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This Weekend
Friday, 6/11 – ESCONI General Meeting. James St. John, from Ohio State University at Newark, will be speaking on “Weird Fossils & Fossil Oddities” at the ESCONI General Meeting at 8:00 p.m. College of Dupage Building K, Room #131. Saturday, 6/12 – Mineralogy & Micromount Study Group Meeting. 7:30 p.m. College of Dupage, Building K,…
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New Fossil Park in Laurel Maryland
Via Washington Post: …”It’s the most important dinosaur site east of the Mississippi River,” said geologist Peter Kranz, president of the Dinosaur Fund, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that supports dinosaur fossil research and preservation in the region. “Each time it rains, something new comes out,” Kranz said. The park, which the Maryland-National Capital Park and…
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Plate Theory
From PhysOrg: A study in Nature suggests that volcanoes and mountains in the Mediterranean can grow from the pressure of the semi-liquid mantle pushing on Earth’s crust from below. “The rise and subsidence of different points of the earth is not restricted to the exact locations of the plate boundary. You can get tectonic activity…
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Horned Dinosaurs in Europe
Via BBC: Horned dinosaurs previously considered native only to Asia and North America might also have roamed the lands of prehistoric Europe, say scientists. Palaeontologists have announced the discovery of fossils belonging to a horned creature in the Bakony Mountains of western Hungary….
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Got Fossil Bugs?
Fullersburg Woods Nature Center in Oak Brook, annual Bug Bash, 2- 6 pm. ESCONI members have been asked to add a booth on fossil “bugs”. To share your bug fossils and for additional info. contact Ms. Nikki Dahlin at (630) 850-3723 x 8122.
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ESCONI Facebook Page
On Facebook? Come over to the ESCONI facebook page and visit! http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/ESCONI-Earth-Science-Club-of-Northern-Illinois/120623877970391?ref=ts
