Tag: volcanic
-
A 30,000-Year-Old Fossil Frozen in Volcanic Ash Holds an Unbelievable Secret
SciTechDaily brings news of a unique fossil discovery in Italy. A 30,000 year old fossil of a vulture shows that soft tissue can be preserved in volcanic rock deposits. The research was published in the journal Geology. The vulture fossil was originally discovered in 1889 near Rome by a local landowner, who recognized its exceptional…
-
Exquisite Fossils Show an Entire Rain Forest Ecosystem
Scientific American has a story about a fossil deposit in New Zealand. The deposit formed around a shallow-sided volcanic crater about 23 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. This site is about an hour’s drive from the city of Dunedin in New Zealand. There are fossils of plants and animals and the preservation is…
-
NYT: Burning Fossil Fuels Helped Drive Earth’s Most Massive Extinction
The New York Times Trilobites column has a story about the Permian Mass Extinction event. A paper published in the journal Geology adds more evidence to the theory that this mass extinction was driven by volcanic eruptions through ancient oil and coal deposits in Siberia. The study looked at chemical traces in the rocks in…
-
Eos: A Little-Known Mass Extinction and the “Dawn of the Modern World”
Eos has a story about a little known mass extinction that led to the rise of the dinosaurs. New research published in the journal Science Advances shows that climate change driven by volcanic eruptions in western Canada brought about the dinosaurs and eventually the modern world. The event is called Carnian Pluvial Episode. It occurred…
-
SciNews: New Research Provides Comprehensive Reconstruction of End-Permian Mass Extinction
SciNews has a story about new research that provides insights into the causes of the “Great Dying”. The End Permian Mass Extinction was the worst extinctionsin Earth’s history. It occurred about 252 million years ago. During it, about 96% of all marine species and over 70% of terrestrial species went extinct. Those percentages are for…
-
SciTechDaily: Discovery of a New Mass Extinction – Carnian Pluvial Episode – 233 Million Years Ago
SciTechDaily has a story about the identification of a new mass extinction. This one called the “Carnian Pluvial Episode”. It occurred about 233 million years ago during the Triassic Period. The cause is believed to be flood basaltic volcanic eruptions in western Canada. Some of the outcomes was the rise of the dinosaurs and the…
-
Discovery of ancient super-eruptions indicates the Yellowstone hotspot may be waning
From the “Maybe Some Good News Department”, phys.org has an article about the hot spot under Yellowstone National Park. This paper, from the journal Geology, looked at past Yellowstone eruptions of the super volcano to assess trends and found that the interval and the intensity of eruptions have been decreasing. Throughout Earth’s long history, volcanic…
-
The Great Dying
Via National Geographic: Massive volcanic eruptions wiped out the world’s forests about 250 million years ago, leaving the planet teeming with wood-eating fungi, according to a new study…
