Tag: geology
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Lost ‘mega-escarpment’ across ancient USA may explain Grand Canyon’s missing billion years
Phys.org has an interesting story about the Grand Canyon. The geologic record of the Grand Canyon spans about 2 billion years, but more than half of it is missing! This gap is known as the Great Unconformity. Now, a new study, published in the journal Geology, may have found evidence of what happened those missing…
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PBS Eons: How Pangea Upended Life on Earth
PBS Eons has released their TV series about Pangea! Check out Episode 2 on pbs.org. In the Late Carboniferous Period, predatory amphibians and giant arthropods ruled the swamps. But ancient seed plants and amniotes were evolving adaptations to drier climates. These will help them thrive on Pangea in the Permian Period to come. This is…
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Happy 300th Birthday, James Hutton!
Today marks the 300th Birthday of James Hutton (1726-1797), a Scottish geologist, argiculturist, chemical manufacturer, naturalist, and physician. He is widely considered to be the “Father of Modern Geology”. Hutton was born on June 3rd, 1726 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
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PBS Eons: When the Earth Had Supermountains
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about some truly giant mountains and the evolutionary changes they drove.
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Video for ESCONI April 2026 Paleontology Meeting – “Digging the Marl of the Lance Formation”
The April 2026 Paleontology Study Group Meeting featured Keith Robitschek and his presentation “Digging the Marl of the Lance Formation”.
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Video for ESCONI April 2026 General Meeting – “Life in the Devonian Period, The Age of Fishes”
The April 2026 General Meeting was held on April 10th, 2026 at 8:00 via Zoom. At the meeting, Jessica Hull presented “Life in the Devonian Period, The Age of Fishes.”
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PBS Terra: The Cascadia Megaquake Is Inevitable. And It Will Reshape America Forever
PBS Terra has an interesting new video. This one covers the history, science, and future of the Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest.
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Video for ESCONI March 2026 General Meeting – “Archaeological, Geological, and Other Historic Sites in Portugal”
Jeffrey Amelse presented “Archeological, Geological, and Other Historic Sites in Portugal”. The meeting was held on March 13th, 2026 at 8:00 PM via Zoom.
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ESCONI March 2026 General Meeting – March 13th, 2026 at 8:00 PM – “Archaeological, Geological, and Other Historic Sites in Portugal”
Jeffrey Amelse will be presenting “Archeological, Geological, and Other Historic Sites in Portugal”. The meeting will be held on March 13th, 2026 at 8:00 PM via Zoom.
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There’s Something MUCH Bigger Than Yellowstone. And It Will Happen Again
PBS Terra has an interesting video about super volcanoes and they larger cousin… Large Igneous Provinces (LIPs). Yellowstone was massive. Roughly a thousand times larger than the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the biggest eruption in the history of the continental United States. And if Yellowstone erupted again, the consequences for the U.S. and the…
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PBS Eons: When a Tiny Land Bridge Triggered an Ice Age
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about the origin of Panama and how it changed the world. On land, the Isthmus of Panama kicked off possibly the greatest natural experiment in the history of life on Earth. In the water, this narrow strip of land did something completely different: it divided.…
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ESCONI Field Trip to Danville Shale Pile Fossils – Saturday, September 27th, 2025
Danville Field Trip Rules for Saturday, September 27th, 2025 An ESCONI field trip to the Danville IL Shale Pile for Pennsylvanian fossils is scheduled for Saturday September 27, 2025 starting at 10 AM. This is on private property and there is an attendance limit of 25 people. The gate will be secured once we are…
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Fossil Friday #280: Mayomyzon pieckoensis
This is the “Fossil Friday” post #280. Expect this to be a somewhat regular feature of the website. We will post any fossil pictures you send in to esconi.info@gmail.com. Please include a short description or story. Check the #FossilFriday Bluesky/Twitter hash tag for contributions from around the world! Mayomyzon pieckoensis is an extinct species of lamprey found…
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Throwback Thursday #280: Braceville Trip 05/16/2009
Here’s a great report from Andrew Young of the Braceville Field Trip on May 16th, 2009. Notice that the spoil pile is much bigger!
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Scientists Discover ‘Goblin Prince’ That Roamed With Dinosaurs
Science Alert has a story about the redicovery of a key fossil in the back of a museum drawer. Discovered around 2006, this new species, Bolg amondol, is a fossil gila monster from Utah. It dates to the late Cretaceous. The name translates to “mound-headed goblin prince” in J.R.R. Tolkien‘s Elvish language. Hank Woolley, paleontologist at…
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PBS Eons: There’s An Invisible Ocean Between These Fossils
There’s a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about trilobites and what they show us about the history of the Earth’s continents. This is the hundred-year tale of how an unlikely bunch of bottom-dwelling marine critters helped reveal that ocean basins are basically reincarnated every few hundred million years.
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Happy Birthday, David Attenborough! 99 ways he has inspired us, by Barack Obama, Billie Eilish, Morgan Freeman – and many more
The Guardian has a tribute to David Attenborough for his 99th birthday on May 8th. The tribute is a series of 99 birthday wishes from famous people thanking him for his inspiration. Chris Packham, Presenter, nature activistIt’s all about truth. Ask yourself, “Has David ever knowingly lied to me?” No, never. He may have told…
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Video for ESCONI General Meeting April 2025 – “Geological Framework of Indiana”
The April 2025 General Meeting was held via Zoom on April 11th, 2025. Our speaker was Todd Thompson. Todd is the Director and State Geologist of Indiana. His presentation will give an overview of the geology of Indiana, focusing on structures, stratigraphy, and paleogeography through time.
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The largest flood in Earth’s history burst through Gibraltar and Sicily and refilled the entire Mediterranean in just a few years
The Conversation has an article about the mother of all floods… the flooding of the Mediterranean about 5 million years ago. The Atlantic Ocean seeped it’s way through Strait of Gibraltar, which was blocked by the movement of tectonic plates. This caused the Mediterranean Sea to dry up and led to the formation of large…
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PBS Eons: Will We Survive The Future? (with John Green)
PBS Eons has another of their long form videos. This one is about the future… will we survive? Just because our ancestors have made it through every major period of upheaval in the Earth’s history so far doesn't mean that our survival through future changes is guaranteed. Humans have become a force of nature, but…
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PBS Eons: The Graveyard at the Center of the Earth
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about plate tectonics… how and why. Scientists have been trying to solve the mystery of why plate tectonics works the way it does for over a hundred years. And they might have just uncovered a key to cracking it.
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Scientists find hidden ‘hotspot’ that helped create the Great Lakes before North America even existed
LiveScience has an interesting story about the origins of the Great Lakes and why they formed in their specific location around 20,000 years ago. A new study published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that the Cape Verde hotspot, which still exists beneath the island nation in the Central Atlantic Ocean, played a key role in…
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PBS Eons: Did Asteroids Spark Life?
PBS Eons has a new video. This one is about the very early history of the Earth, a period called the Hadean. How did the building blocks of life form? Harold Miller did some experiments in the 1950s attempting to recreate the conditions. The impacts of a large asteroid might have provided the perfect condition…
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Here’s How Earthquakes Are Measured
The New York Times has an interesting article that explains the moment magnitude scale used to calibrate the strength of an earthquake. The logarithmic was proposed by Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori in 1979. The method measures an earthquake’s magnitude based on its seismic moment. It replaced the older Richter scale because it saturates…
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PBS Eons: Could You Survive The Great Dying?
PBS Eons has another interesting episode. This one is about the Permian Mass Extinction, which is often referred to as the "Great Dying" as more than 90% of all species went extinct during this event. The cause is thought to be massive flood basalt volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia about 250 million years…
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New Grand Canyon Discovery Could Rewrite Geology Textbooks
SciTechDaily reports on a discovery that may reshape our understanding of the Cambrian Period. New research, published in the journal GSA Today, focuses on Cambrian rock formations at the base of the Grand Canyon. The study, a collaborative effort led by Carol Dehler, a professor at Utah State University, and Fred Sundberg, a paleontologist and adjunct professor at UNM, revisits…
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PBS Eons: How the Himalayas Changed the World
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one explains how the Himalayan orogeny has affected the whole Earth over the last 50 million years. The rise of the Himalayas affected more than just the immediate area. Turns out, we may have them to thank for everything from the rise of giant flightless birds in…
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PBS Eons: When Earth “Ate” a Planet
There's a new episode of PBS Eons. This one is about the origin of our moon. Where did our unique moon come from? It turns out that lunar rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts are a clue, pointing to the origin of our closest cosmic companion, an origin even stranger than you might imagine…
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Throwback Thursday #233: Origin of Geodes
This is Throwback Thursday #233. In these, we look back into the past at ESCONI specifically and Earth Science in general. If you have any contributions, (science, pictures, stories, etc …), please send them to esconi.info@gmail.com. Thanks! ESCONI held a geode field trip to Vickers Geodes in Hamilton, IL in August 2024. The area around…
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PBS Eons: When India Was An Island
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about the island isolation and how it affects evolution. We see that in the paleontological record of India. We need to talk about the biggest break-up of all-time: the break-up of the supercontinent Pangea, and how, ultimately, when India smashed back into Asia, it traded one…
