Via The Guardian:  – (hat tip Floyd) An archaeologist says he has found the oldest piece of rock art in Australia and one of the oldest in the world: an Aboriginal work created 28,000 years ago in an outback cave.  The dating of one of the thousands of images in the Northern Territory rock shelter, known as Nawarla Gabarnmang, will be published in the next edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science. The archaeologist Bryce Barker, from the University of Southern Queensland, said he found the rock in June last year but had only recently had it dated at the…

Via Scientific American: “The surface of the earth is far more beautiful and far more intricate than any lifeless world. Our planet is graced by life and one quality that sets life apart is it’s complexity.”Carl Sagan in “Cosmos – The Persistence of Memory“ In July 1791 the French aristocrat, adventurer and naturalist Diedonnè-Silvain-Guy-Tancrede de Gvalet de Dolomieu published a short article describing a peculiar limestone he had observed during a voyage in the Alps. The white rock was very similar to common limestone, but the mineral grains forming the unusual rock showed almost no reaction with acids, unlike crystals…

Via Geology.com from Platt: ‘…researchers are testing whether hydraulic fracturing fluids can travel thousands of feet via geologic faults into drinking water aquifers close to the surface, a US Department of Energy official said Friday. A fault from the Marcellus Shale formation, which is thousands of feet below the surface, could provide “a quick pathway for fracking fluids to migrate upwards,” said Richard Hammack, a spokesman for the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. The experiment is being carried out at a site in Greene County in southwestern Pennsylvania where conventional shallow wells were drilled and long since…

From ABC 5 DesMoines via ESCONI Discussion Group: “… John enlisted expert help from the University of Iowa. The archeologists and paleontologists became excited because it’s unusual to have so many different bones from one mammoth in one place. The bones belong to John since he found them on his property. But owning a mammoth can be difficult. “Sometimes I get tired of moving bones around from one spot to the other,” he laughed. …”

Via WXFS: “…Reser says geologists attribute Niagara Falls to a massive escarpment, or ridge that runs through Wisconsin, notably at High Cliff State Park near Lake Winnebago.  “The ledge is one of those amazing little outcrops in Wisconsin that really literally shapes the state” Reser said.  The escarpment runs nearly 1,000 miles through eastern Wisconsin where it forms the Door County peninsula, Lake Winnebago and the bay of Green Bay.  It then moves through Upper Michigan, southern Ontario and enters western New York where is appears as Niagara Falls…”  

From Scientific American: “The town and its fluctuating fortunes are a humble reminder that much of human history has been influenced by the vagaries of the geologic processes that shape the land we inhabit, form the minerals from which we construct our civilizations, and produce the riches we covet.” -Lon Abbott and Terri Cook, Geology Underfoot in Northern Arizona. While tourists gazed rapt into the billions of years exposed in the layer-rock-cake walls of the Grand Canyon, my mother and I would hop down to Jerome. At Grand Canyon, you have to climb down thousands of feet to touch 2…

NPR – (hat tip Mary Fairchild) Across the Mississippi River from St. Louis’ famous Gateway Arch is a part of Illinois that’s a post-industrial wasteland. Some hope the construction of a new bridge across the Mississippi River will help revitalize the area. But archaeologists worry future development could destroy what’s left of another neighborhood — one that flourished there almost a thousand years ago. Working just ahead of the cranes and earth movers that are building a stretch of the interstate freeway, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a sophisticated American Indian settlement no one knew existed. There are remnants…

Via Science Now: At first glance, there doesn’t appear to be much happening in the mud buried 30 meters below the Pacific Ocean sea floor. But this ancient muck, which hasn’t had a fresh shot of food or sunlight since the days of the dinosaurs, still harbors life—if just barely. Scientists have discovered that deep-sea microbial communities, buried for 86 million years, are still consuming oxygen, albeit at extraordinarily low rates. These microorganisms eking out an existence in slow motion reveal just how little it takes to sustain life on our own planet, and potentially on others…

Great photos of the opening of the new and improved Hall of Paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural History. 

Via PhysOrg: This new find indicates that a carpometacarpal morphology similar to that seen in modern birds probably evolved independently in enantiornithines and appeared earlier than in Ornithuromorpha, and demonstrates that character evolution in early birds was more complex than previously believed. Researchers reported in the latest issue of Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 32(3), May 2012.   

The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is now accepting advance orders for the Earth Science Week 2012 Toolkit. The Earth Science Week 2012 Toolkit contains educational materials for all ages that correspond to this year’s event theme, “Discovering Careers in the Earth Sciences.”

Written by Associated Press via Washington Post – (hat tip Floyd whose daughter, Dr. Rebecca Ackermann, is a professor in the department of archaeology at the University of Cape Town, a former Leakey Scholar.) Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey predicts end is near on debate over evolution … “If you look back, the thing that strikes you, if you’ve got any sensitivity, is that extinction is the most common phenomena,” Leakey says. “Extinction is always driven by environmental change. Environmental change is always driven by climate change. Man accelerated, if not created, planet change phenomena; I think we have to recognize that…

Hawthorne Hill Nature Center needs rocks! They are creating a family-friendly rock collection area. They are looking for all different kinds of rocks and would appreciate if you would contact them if you have rocks to donate – whatever you would like to donate – interesting shaped or naturally-colored rocks, stream stones, fossil-laden rocks, minerals, etc.  How cool! This October, Hawthorne Hill Nature Center will be celebrating their very first “Rock Out” Month at HHNC and throughout Elgin with special programs at the nature center, Elgin Public Museum, and Elgin History Museum. To donate rocks & fossils, please contact: April…