Via Scientific American: … Girls and women working in the field were tolerated in the social lower classes, like professional fossil collector and dealer Mary Anning (1799-1847) of Lyme Regis (Dorset), daughter of a craftsman, but for upper-class women engaging in field research was almost impossible. Women could minimize these “problems” by collecting fossils and studying rocks in their local environment, for example on private property or in the surroundings of their home, where their social status was known and such behaviour regarded as eccentricity and somehow tolerated. …

Via PhysOrg: … The oceanic crust did not have to descend Using computers, the scientists simulated the composition of bedrock and molten rock that would emerge from partially melting the oceanic crust at various depths and temperatures. They then compared the data calculated for the molten rock with the actual concentration of trace elements in the oldest continental rocks. “Our results paint a surprising picture,” Dr. Nagel reports. “The oceanic crust did not have to descend to a depth of 100 kilometers to create the molten rock that makes up the rocks of the first continents.” According to the calculations, a…

Via Scientific American a fascinating interview: Tyler Keillor (pronounced “KEEL-er”) is a soft-spoken, understated paleoartist whose work is anything but. He works at the University of Chicago as a paleoartist, reconstructing creatures that paleontologist Paul Sereno excavates on his expeditions around the world… … Do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on? (pics, please!!) The majority of my projects so far have represented new species, so each one has had its own very special set of challenges – artistic and technical – and so in their own ways each project became my favorite at the time I was working on…

From Magma Cum Laude via geology.com – How to collect fossils on the shores of Lake Erie – corals, trilobites, brachiopods… The weather has been freakishly nice for March in Buffalo, so yesterday I decided to chuck any ideas of getting work done and went fossiling with a friend instead. The area where I live sits right on top of the Devonian Onondaga limestone, so I’m already surrounded by a very fossiliferous unit (it’s full of things like coral and brachiopods and crinoids). But for a special locale, it’s worth it to head down to Eighteen Mile Creek, which flows…

Article Via Geology.com from NSF: View a video showing how body size of mammals was affected by global warming. When Sifrhippus sandae, the earliest known horse, first appeared in the forests of North America more than 50 million years ago, it would not have been mistaken for a Clydesdale. It weighed in at around 12 pounds–and it was destined to get much smaller over the ensuing millennia. Sifrhippus lived during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a 175,000-year interval of time some 56 million years ago in which average global temperatures rose by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit…. more  

Via ScientificComputing: NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has revealed unexpected details on the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta. New images and data highlight the diversity of Vesta’s surface and reveal unusual geologic features, some of which were never previously seen on asteroids. These results were discussed on March 21, 2012, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at The Woodlands, TX…. … “Our analysis finds this bright material originates from Vesta and has undergone little change since the formation of Vesta over four billion years ago,” said Jian-Yang Li, a Dawn participating scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. “We’re…

Via Discover Magazine: … Paleontologists have long wondered by so many fossilized dinosaurs have their necks contorted into painful-looking positions—the phenomenon even has a name: opisthotonus. Various hypotheses have suggested the dinosaurs died in pain, or that their unusual posture is from rigor mortis. Could be, though, it’s just what floppy necks do in water, according to a recent study involving chicken carcasses…. More

After listening to Dr. Fred Smith, Illinois State University about homo sapiens neanderthalis at Burpee Museum’s Paleofest,  This new article made much more sense!  Via Scientific American: First of Our Kind: Could Australopithecus sediba Be Our Long Lost Ancestor?