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Articles in 'Geology and palaeontology'
Lava fingerprinting reveals differences between Hawaii's twin volcanoes
— 2 Dec 2011 10:53Hawaii's main volcano chains - the Loa and Kea trends - have distinct sources of magma and unique plumbing systems connecting them to the Earth's deep mantle, according to UBC research published this week in Nature Geoscience, in conjunction with researchers at the universities of Hawaii and Massachusetts…
Earthquakes: Water as a lubricant
— 2 Dec 2011 10:23Geophysicists from Potsdam have established a mode of action that can explain the irregular distribution of strong earthquakes at the San Andreas Fault in California. As the science magazine Nature reports in its latest issue, the scientists examined the electrical conductivity of the rocks at great depths, which is closely related to the water content within the rocks. From the pattern of electrical conductivity and seismic activity they were able to deduce that rock water acts as a lubricant…
Ancient environment found to drive marine biodiversity
— 25 Nov 2011 09:00Much of our knowledge about past life has come from the fossil record - but how accurately does that reflect the true history and drivers of biodiversity on Earth?…
Earth's core deprived of oxygen
— 23 Nov 2011 19:46The composition of the Earth's core remains a mystery. Scientists know that the liquid outer core consists mainly of iron, but it is believed that small amounts of some other elements are present as well. Oxygen is the most abundant element in the planet, so it is not unreasonable to expect oxygen might be one of the dominant 'light elements' in the core. However, new research from a team including Carnegie's Yingwei Fei shows that oxygen does not have a major presence in the outer core. This has major implications for our understanding of the period when the Earth formed through the accretion of dust and clumps of matter. Their work is published in Nature…
Human, artificial intelligence join forces to pinpoint fossil locations
— 22 Nov 2011 16:59In 1991, a team led by Washington University in St. Louis palaeoanthropologist Glenn Conroy, PhD, discovered the fossils of the first - and still the only - known pre-human ape ever found south of the equator in Africa after only 30 minutes of searching a limestone cave in Namibia…
Palaeontologist describes large nest of juvenile dinosaurs, first of their genus ever found
— 21 Nov 2011 19:34A nest containing the fossilised remains of 15 juvenile Protoceratops andrewsi dinosaurs from Mongolia has been described by a University of Rhode Island palaeontologist, revealing new information about postnatal development and parental care. It is the first nest of this genus ever found and the first indication that Protoceratops juveniles remained in the nest for an extended period…
Researchers pinpoint date and rate of Earth's most extreme extinction
— 18 Nov 2011 17:09It's well known that Earth's most severe mass extinction occurred about 250 million years ago. What's not well known is the specific time when the extinctions occurred. A team of researchers from North America and China have published a paper in Science this week which explicitly provides the date and rate of extinction…
Archeologists investigate Ice Age hominins' adaptability to climate change
— 17 Nov 2011 17:40Computational modelling that examines evidence of how hominin groups evolved culturally and biologically in response to climate change during the last Ice Age also bears new insights into the extinction of Neanderthals. Details of the complex modelling experiments conducted at Arizona State University and the University of Colorado Denver will be published in the December issue of the journal Human Ecology, available online Nov. 17…
Research suggests strong Indian crust thrust beneath the Tibetan Plateau
— 9 Apr 2011 11:34For many years, most scientists studying Tibet have thought that a very hot and very weak lower and middle crust underlies its plateau, flowing like a fluid. Now, a team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology is questioning this long-held belief and proposing that an entirely different mechanism is at play…
Did dinosaurs have lice? Researchers say it's possible
— 6 Apr 2011 15:22A new study louses up a popular theory of animal evolution and opens up the possibility that dinosaurs were early - perhaps even the first - animal hosts of lice…
'Stocky dragon' dinosaur terrorised Late Cretaceous Europe
Fires and floods key to dinosaur island secrets