Tag: Antarctica
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NYT: 250 Million Years Ago, They Hibernated at the Bottom of the World
The New York Times “Trilobites” column has a story about hibernation… ancient hibernation. Behavior is rarely preserved in the fossil record, but sometimes researchers can find clues that can help to tease out the details of life on early many, many years ago. In this case, modern techniques like paleo bone histology led to the…
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First Soft-Shelled Dinosaur Egg Fossils Found
Smithsonian Magazine has a story about dinosaur eggs. Nature had two articles that found evidence that dinosaur eggs were soft-shelled. The first study found evidence of soft-shelled eggs by analyzing fossilized Protoceratops and Mussaurus egg shells. The evidence suggests eggs similar to those of turtles. The second paper identified an enigmatic fossil, commonly referred to…
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NYT: Fossil Shows Cold-Blooded Frogs Lived on Warm Antarctica
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about the discovery of fossil frogs on Antarctica. The frog lived about 40 million years ago in what is now Seymour Island, which sits on the Antarctic Peninsula roughly 700 miles south of Tierra Del Fuego on South America. The specimen was found in 2015 by…
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LiveScience: Remains of 90 million-year-old rainforest discovered under Antarctic ice
LiveScience has a story about a fossil rainforest under the ice in Antarctica. This forest was found in West Antarctica and dates to about 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period. The fossils show a tropical climate similar to New Zealand. Read all about it in a paper in the April 1st, 2020, edition…
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PBS Eons: When Antarctica Was Green
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one discusses when Antarctica was green and had a population of animals. Before the start of the Eocene Epoch about 56 million years ago–Antarctica was still joined to both Australia and South America. And it turns out that a lot of what we recognize about the southern hemisphere…
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Five New Fossil Forests Found in Antarctica
National Geographic has a story about multiple new fossil forests which were recently found in Antarctica. Back in the Permian, Antarctica was covered in prehistoric greenery. The team of scientists, which included Erik Gulbranson from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, that discovered these forests were there to look for clues to what caused the Permian Mass…
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Six Points of Perspective on Larsen C’s Huge New Iceberg
Eos has an article about the Delaware-sized slab of ice that just broke off of Antarctica. It weighs about 1 trillion metric tons. By the way, that’s a 1 followed by 12 0’s… 1,000,000,000,000. The 5800 square kilometer chunk is drifting free in the Weddell Sea. But now a 5800-square-kilometer section is free, drifting in…
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Next on NOVA: “Mystery Beneath the Ice” January 20, 2016 at 9 PM
The next episode of PBS’s Nova is “Mystery Beneath the Ice”. It starts airing on January 20, 2016 at 9 PM on PBS. There’s a preview on the web and like their other shows, full episodes should be available online. Enjoy! Program Description: Tiny, transparent, and threatened, krill are crucial to the Antarctic ecosystem and,…
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Josh Mathews on Antarctica Paleontology
Last night, those who attened the General Meeting heard an informative and entertaining lecture about Josh Mathew’s paleontology work in Antartica. As a follow-up, here is a recently published article discussing some of what he told us about – Augustana Geology Museum welcomes two new flying reptiles. Also, of note – Augustana College invites learners of all…
