Via Christian Science Monitor: Fossil remains of sauropods – dinosaurs with long necks and tails, weighing up to 100 tons – have been found on every continent but one. Now, scientists report unearthing the first evidence of these animals in Antarctica, the last holdout. The Argentine research team is reporting the discovery of a single vertebra and links it to a group of sauropods known as titanosaurs, hefty plant-eaters that were said to dominate the ranks of herbivores during their heyday between 90 million and 65 million years ago….The find, previewed at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology‘s annual meeting in…

The Smithsonian blog has posted a great article about the 2011 in paleontology. google-site-verification: google59dc93f74453c3c5.html

Check out all the dinosaur ornaments on Christmas trees!

Found this personal short description of cutting stone for lapidary.

From Wall Street Journal: The company leading efforts to unlock the U.K.’s potentially vast shale-gas reserves suffered a setback Wednesday after a report found it was “highly probable” a controversial production technique caused two small earthquake tremors in the country earlier this year. The report, which was financed by U.K. energy company Cuadrilla Resources Ltd., pointed to “strong evidence” that the two minor earthquakes and 48 weaker seismic events resulted from Cuadrilla’s pumping drilling fluids used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” At the same time, the report said the events were the result of a “rare combination of geological factors.”…

Via ScienceDaily: The crushing pressures and intense temperatures in Earth’s deep interior squeeze atoms and electrons so closely together that they interact very differently. With depth materials change. New experiments and supercomputer computations have revealed that iron oxide undergoes a new kind of transition under deep Earth conditions. Iron oxide, FeO, is a component of the second most abundant mineral at Earth’s lower mantle, ferropericlase….  

Via Science Daily: New research from Montana State University’s Museum of the Rockies has revealed how dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus used their famous killer claws, leading to a new hypothesis on the evolution of flight in birds…

BoingBoing on the history of birds and dinosaurs: …The connection between dinosaurs and birds, while kind of flipping obvious once somebody points it out, was not much discussed among laypeople until I was in my teens. (That would be the 1990s, FYI.)  But, among scientists, the idea of a dinosaur-bird relationship is nothing new. In fact, Thomas Henry Huxley was making that connection back in the 1860s…

The Fossil Forum web site offers a Fossil ID discussion board. Just post your photo and see what people think!

Via USAToday:  … Well, how about Google Earth instead? Like a friendly genie, that modern technology has started answering archeologist’s wishes with its worldwide catalog of satellite views of the Earth. A pair of studies in the Journal of Archaelogical Science this year suggest these views are revealing a vast and ancient story, one only starting to emerge from the fabled desert of Arabia….

Via Lapidary Journal:  Gallery of Issues Contributors  

Via Science (October): … researchers report new analyses of the remains of a mastodon found in the 1970s with a bone spear point in its rib. Scientists used DNA and radiocarbon dating to demonstrate that the point came from a mastodon bone shaped into a weapon by humans and used a startling 13,800 years ago. That’s nearly 1000 years before the Clovis culture, long considered to be the first culture in the New World….

Via Scientific American: … A team of researchers says it has found in a Russian mineral sample the first natural example of a quasicrystal, an unusual material that displays some of the properties of a crystal but boasts a more intricate and complex structure. Since quasicrystals were characterized 25 years ago, numerous versions have been cooked up in the laboratory, but a natural example would indicate that nature’s products are more diverse than previously thought…The find could force a redefinition of minerals to include such quasicrystals… More – interview with Nobel Prize winner award to Israelli Chemist for another quasicrystal…

Via BBC: …Mining is the main engine of Peru’s booming economy, but it is also the cause of numerous social conflicts around the country. The $4.8bn (£3.1bn) Conga project would be the biggest mining investment in the country’s history. On foot and on horseback, rural protesters climbed to four high mountain lakes whose waters would be moved to make way for the gold mine….

Via Science Daily: … A new species of horned dinosaur was just announced by an international team of scientists led by Alf Museum staff, 95 years after the initial discovery of the fossil. The animal, named Spinops sternbergorum, lived approximately 76 million years ago in southern Alberta, Canada….

Via Washington Post: Map of Antarctica: … Although some of these mountains are as tall as the Alps, they’re still obscured by more than 3,200 feet of ice. The highest elevations are marked in this image in red and black, and the lowest are shown in dark blue. The light blue area shows the extent of the continental shelf. Using radar to map the landscape, scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have pooled data from decades of polar expeditions to create the most accurate and detailed map of the “white continent” ever made…

Via Beading Daily: … there are over 700 named agates alone! One of the things I love best about wandering through the endless maze of gem dealers at the Tucson shows in February, in fact, is keeping any eye out for interesting and unusual stones, and many of them are quartz…