WFS

Formation of sedimentary layers of white clay, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site for wood fossils, Tamilnadu, India

Fossil site in Kerala, India

Fossil wood park maintained by geological survey of India at Tamilnadu

Cretaceous fossil sites india

Fossils in rack:-Cyad

Fossils in rack:-echiniderms

Fossils in rack:-Rastellum sp

Pre-historic seabed, Cretaceous period

New Fossils Push the Origin of Flowering Plants Back by 100 Million Years to the Early Triassic

October 3rd, 2013

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Drilling cores from Switzerland have revealed the oldest known fossils of the direct ancestors of flowering plants. These beautifully preserved 240-million-year-old pollen grains are evidence that flowering plants evolved 100 million years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study in the open-access journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

Flowering plants evolved from extinct plants related to conifers, ginkgos, cycads, and seed ferns. The oldest known fossils from flowering plants are pollen grains. These are small, robust and numerous and therefore fossilize more easily than leaves and flowers.

Flower-like pollen from the Triassic. (Credit: UZH)

An uninterrupted sequence of fossilized pollen from flowers begins in the Early Cretaceous, approximately 140 million years ago, and it is generally assumed that flowering plants first evolved around that time. But the present study documents flowering plant-like pollen that is 100 million years older, implying that flowering plants may have originated in the Early Triassic (between 252 to 247 million years ago) or even earlier.

Many studies have tried to estimate the age of flowering plants from molecular data, but so far no consensus has been reached. Depending on dataset and method, these estimates range from the Triassic to the Cretaceous. Molecular estimates typically need to be “anchored” in fossil evidence, but extremely old fossils were not available for flowering plants. “That is why the present finding of flower-like pollen from the Triassic is significant,” says Prof. Peter Hochuli, University of Zurich.

Peter Hochuli and Susanne Feist-Burkhardt from Paleontological Institute and Museum, University of Zürich, studied two drilling cores from Weiach and Leuggern, northern Switzerland, and found pollen grains that resemble fossil pollen from the earliest known flowering plants. With Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy, they obtained high-resolution images across three dimensions of six different types of pollen.

In a previous study from 2004, Hochuli and Feist-Burkhardt documented different, but clearly related flowering-plant-like pollen from the Middle Triassic in cores from the Barents Sea, south of Spitsbergen. The samples from the present study were found 3000 km south of the previous site. “We believe that even highly cautious scientists will now be convinced that flowering plants evolved long before the Cretaceous,” say Hochuli.

What might these primitive flowering plants have looked like? In the Middle Triassic, both the Barents Sea and Switzerland lay in the subtropics, but the area of Switzerland was much drier than the region of the Barents Sea. This implies that these plants occurred a broad ecological range. The pollen’s structure suggests that the plants were pollinated by insects: most likely beetles, as bees would not evolve for another 100 million years.

Dinosaur Wind Tunnel Test Provides New Insight Into the Evolution of Bird Flight

October 2nd, 2013

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A study into the aerodynamic performance of feathered dinosaurs, by scientists from the University of Southampton, has provided new insight into the evolution of bird flight.

In recent years, new fossil discoveries have changed our view of the early evolution of birds and, more critically, their powers of flight. We now know about a number of small-bodied dinosaurs that had feathers on their wings as well as on their legs and tails: completely unique in the fossil record..

However, even in light of new fossil discoveries, there has been a huge debate about how these dinosaurs were able to fly.

Scientists from the University of Southampton hope to have ended this debate by examining the flight performance of one feathered dinosaur pivotal to this debate — the early Cretaceous five-winged paravian Microraptor. The first theropod described with feathers on its arms, legs and tail (five potential lifting surfaces), Microraptor implies that forelimb-dominated bird flight passed through a four-wing (‘tetrapteryx’) phase and represents an important stage in the evolution of gliding and flapping.

Understanding the evolution of flight with a micro raptor in the wind tunnel at the University of Southampton. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southampton)

The Southampton researchers performed a series of wind tunnel experiments and flight simulations on a full-scale, anatomically accurate model of Microraptor.

Results of the team’s wind tunnel tests show that Microraptor would have been most stable gliding when generating large amounts of lift with its wings.. Flight simulations demonstrate that this behaviour had advantages since this high lift coefficient allows for slow glides, which can be achieved with less height loss. For gliding down from low elevations, such as trees, this slow, and aerodynamically less efficient flight was the gliding strategy that results in minimal height loss and longest glide distance.

Much debate, centred on the position and orientation of Microraptor’s legs and wing shape turns out to be irrelevant — tests show that changes in these variables make little difference to the dinosaur’s flight.

Dr Gareth Dyke, Senior Lecturer in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study, says: “Significant to the evolution of flight, we show that Microraptor did not require a sophisticated, ‘modern’ wing morphology to undertake effective glides, as the high-lift coefficient regime is less dependent upon detail of wing morphology.”

“This is consistent with the fossil record, and also with the hypothesis that symmetric ‘flight’ feathers first evolved in dinosaurs for non-aerodynamic functions, later being adapted to form aerodynamically capable surfaces.”

Dr Roeland de Kat, Research Fellow in the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics Research Group at the University of Southampton and co-author of the study, says: “What interests me is that aerodynamic efficiency is not the dominant factor in determining Microraptor’s glide efficiency. However, it needs a combination of a high lift coefficient and aerodynamic efficiency to perform at its best.”

The paper ‘Aerodynamic performance of the feathered dinosaur Microraptor and the evolution of feathered flight’ is published in the latest issue of Nature Communications.

Dr Dyke and fellow Southampton palaeontologists will showcase their ground-breaking research at the Celebrating Dinosaur Island: Jehol-Wealden International Conference on 21 and 22 September.

The Isle of Wight (Dinosaur Island) and China are key areas for Cretaceous fossils, especially dinosaurs. To celebrate this connection, Chinese and UK dinosaur palaeontologists will discuss their research at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and visit key dinosaur sites on the Isle of Wight and network with tourism and business leaders to build connections for future palaentological research.

Pakistan’s new island, pushed up by earthquake

October 1st, 2013

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(Associated Press) — Alongside the carnage of Pakistan’s massive earthquake came a new creation: a small island of mud, stone and bubbling gas pushed forth from the seabed. Experts say the island was formed by the massive movement of the earth during the 7.7-magnitude quake that hit Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013.

The island appeared off the coast of Gwadar, a port about 330 miles (533 kilometers) from Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi and 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Iran. Navy geologist Mohammed Danish told Pakistan’s Geo Television that a Pakistani Navy team visited the island Wednesday. He said the mass was about 60 feet (18 meters) high, 100 feet (30 meters) wide and 250 feet (76 meters) long, making it a little wider than a tennis court and slightly shorter than a football field.

Such land masses have appeared before off Pakistan’s Makran coast, said Muhammed Arshad, a hydrographer with the navy. After quakes in 1999 and 2010, new land masses rose up along a different part of the coast about 175 miles (282 kilometers) east of Gwadar, he said. Each of those disappeared back into the sea within a year during the stormy monsoon season that sweeps Pakistan every summer, he said.

a small island of mud, stone and bubbling gas

landsat images of area

The ideas for what caused this island to form vary, but the one that has gained the most support so far, it seems, is that it was a mud volcano — the earth of the ocean floor was loosened by the earthquake, which allowed a trapped deposit of methane gas to push up to the surface, carrying the mud and earth with it. These mud volcanoes are fairly common in Pakistan, with 80 active ones currently known to be in Balochistan province, where the earthquake occurred. Shortly after the island formed, local residents went out to explore it, recording this video. Towards the end of the video, you can see the methane gas burbling up through the surface of the island, and the people lighting the gas on fire:

This island hasn’t been named yet, but it’s likely not going to be around long enough to earn one. These mud volcano islands aren’t very stable, and this one will be eroded away by the ocean tides within a few years at most.

“Entelognathus primordialis” New Fish Fossil From China

September 30th, 2013

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A leading British scientist has said that the discovery of a 419-million-year-old fish fossil in China is a stunning and spectacular development.

Palaeobiologist Matt Friedman told the BBC that the fish provided crucial evidence about the evolutionary development of jawed vertebrates.

As a remote relative of humans, it provides important evolutionary clues.

“It is the deepest branch of our family tree that bears the kinds of jaw bones found in humans,” Dr Friedman said.

The fossil was found at China’s Xiaoxiang Reservoir, and was reported by the journal Nature on Thursday.

Entelognathus primordialis had a heavily armoured head and body, a scaly tail, jaws but no teeth and tiny eyes set in large, bony sockets

Scientists say that the heavily armoured fish, Entelognathus primordialis, is a previously unknown member of jawed vertebrates also known as gnathostomes. It has a complex small skull and jaw-bone structure.

“This is an unexpected discovery that inverts schoolbook teaching on the evolution of bony skulls,” Dr Friedman told the BBC.

“Up until now it had been thought that the anatomical peculiarities of bony fishes – the group that would eventually give rise to human beings – are specialisations that arose later in vertebrate evolutionary history in our own bony fish lineage.”

“But now that narrative has been turned on its head.”

Dr Friedman said that the fish’s jaw was much more like that of a modern bony fish – which is why its discovery may offer a new perspective on the early evolution of these creatures.

His review of the significance of the fossil find also appears in the latest edition of Nature.

The fossil of Entelognathus primordialis, in front of a computer screen showing a life restoration image

Scientists say that the evolution of jaws is one of the key episodes in the evolution of vertebrates, but the gap between jawed and jawless vertebrates is so large that it is hard to work out the individual evolutionary steps in the transition.

“While this fossil does not tell us anything about the origin of jawed fishes from jawless ones, it does tell us about subsequent modifications to jaw structure that we thought were unique to bony fishes,” Dr Friedman said.

It is thought that modern jawed vertebrates, such as sharks and bony fishes, emerged from a collection of jawed, armoured fishes known as placoderms.

Dr Friedman says that the discovery of the fossil is a significant advance in our understanding of evolution

Entelognathus primordialis has jaw-bone features previously restricted to bony fishes (osteichthyans) as well as full body armour seen in placoderms, and it would have been around 20cm (7.8in) long.

Dr Friedman says that the fossil adds weight to the theory that many classic bony fish features were evolved “very deep in our family tree, before bony fish split from sharks”.

“This means that we – as in bony fishes – are the ones who have held on to more ancient structures, while it is the sharks that have gone off and done something new and interesting in an evolutionary sense.

“They are the ones that have most radically modified this pattern, which we now understand is probably primitive to all modern jawed vertebrates.”

Ancient Soils Reveal Clues to Early Life On Earth

September 29th, 2013

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Oxygen appeared in the atmosphere up to 700 million years earlier than we previously thought, according to research published today in the journal Nature, raising new questions about the evolution of early life.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and University of British Columbia examined the chemical composition of three-billion-year-old soils from South Africa — the oldest soils on Earth — and found evidence for low concentrations of atmospheric oxygen. Previous research indicated that oxygen began accumulating in the atmosphere only about 2.3 billion years ago during a dynamic period in Earth’s history referred to as the Great Oxygenation Event.

Some of the rocks that Crowe and his colleagues studied. (Credit: Nic Beukes)

“We’ve always known that oxygen production by photosynthesis led to the eventual oxygenation of the atmosphere and the evolution of aerobic life,” says Sean Crowe, co-lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at UBC.

“This study now suggests that the process began very early in Earth’s history, supporting a much greater antiquity for oxygen producing photosynthesis and aerobic life,” says Crowe, who conducted the research while a post-doctoral fellow at Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the University of Southern Denmark in partnership with the centre’s director Donald Canfield.

There was no oxygen in the atmosphere for at least hundreds of millions of years after Earth formed. Today, Earth’s atmosphere is 20 per cent oxygen thanks to photosynthetic bacteria that, like trees and other plants, consume carbon dioxide and release oxygen. The bacteria laid the foundation for oxygen breathing organisms to evolve and inhabit the planet.

“These findings imply that it took a very long time for geological and biological processes to conspire and produce the oxygen rich atmosphere we now enjoy,” says Lasse Døssing, the other lead scientist on the study, from the University of Copenhagen.

Oldest Lizard-Like Fossil Yet to Be Found Hints at Scaly Origins

September 28th, 2013

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The fossilised remains of a reptile closely related to lizards are the oldest yet to be discovered.

Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs) were alive during the Middle Triassic period — around 240 million years ago.

The new fossil finds predate all other lepidosaur records by 12 million years. The findings are published in BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The international team of scientists who dated the fossil jaws have provided evidence that lepidosaurs first appeared after the end-Permian mass extinction event, a period when fauna began to recover and thrive in the more humid climate.

Lead author Dr Marc Jones, who conducted the research at UCL, explained: “The Middle Triassic represents a time when the world has recovered from the Permian mass extinction but is not yet dominated by dinosaurs. This is also when familiar groups, such as frogs and lizards, may have first appeared.”

Top: Vellberg jaw. Bottom: restoration image. (Credit: Marc Jones)

The small teeth and lightly built jaws suggest that the extinct animal preyed on small insects. The new fossils are most closely related to the tuatara, a lizard-like reptile.

Tuatara can be found on 35 islands lying off the coast of New Zealand and were recently reintroduced to the mainland. However, they are the sole survivors of a group that was once as globally widespread as lizards are today. Tuatara feed on beetles, spiders, crickets and small lizards, also enjoying the occasional sea bird.

Today, there are over 9,000 species of lizards, snakes and tuatara. Knowing when the common ancestor of this grouping first appeared is crucial for understanding the ecological context in which it first evolved as well as its subsequent diversification.

To establish the age of the fossil remains, biologists use a dating technique known as a “molecular clock.” This method compares the amount of genetic divergence between living animals, caused by changes in their DNA sequences that have accumulated since they split from a common ancestor. These mutations occur fairly regularly, ticking along at a clock-like rate. However, for the clock to convert genetic differences into geological time, it has to be calibrated using one or more fossils of known relationship and time.

Molecular clocks have been used by biologists to answer questions as important as when the first modern humans emerged, and when humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor. The new fossil jaws can improve molecular dating estimates of when reptiles began to diversify into snakes, lizard and tuatara, and when the first modern lizards inhabited the earth. Previous estimates have varied over a range of 64 million years and the team are keen to help narrow this down.

“Some previous estimates based on molecular data suggested that lizards first evolved 290 million years ago,” said second author Cajsa Lisa Anderson, University of Gothenburg. “To a palaeontologist this seems way too old and our revised molecular analysis agrees with the fossils.”

Revised molecular dating in light of this new fossil find now suggests lizards began to diversify into most of the modern groups we recognise today, such as geckos and skinks, less than 150 million years ago in the Cretaceous period, following continental fragmentation.

The specimens were collected and initially identified by Professor Rainer Schoch from the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde in Stuttgart, where the specimens are now registered.

Scientists anticipate that the Vellberg site will yield yet more fossil discoveries in the future, broadening our knowledge of the vertebrate fossil record.

Co-Author Professor Susan Evans, from the UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, said: “The fossil record of small animals such as lizards and frogs is very patchy. Hopefully, this new fossil site in Germany will eventually give us a broader understanding of what was going on at this time.”

Late Cretaceous Period Was Likely Ice-Free

September 27th, 2013

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For years, scientists have thought that a continental ice sheet formed during the Late Cretaceous Period more than 90 million years ago when the climate was much warmer than it is today. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found evidence suggesting that no ice sheet formed at this time. This finding could help environmentalists and scientists predict what Earth’s climate will be as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.

“Currently, carbon dioxide levels are just above 400 parts per million (ppm), up approximately 120 ppm in the last 150 years and rising about 2 ppm each year,” said Ken MacLeod, a professor of geological sciences at MU. “In our study, we found that during the Late Cretaceous Period, when carbon dioxide levels were around 1,000 ppm, there were no continental ice sheets on earth. So, if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, the Earth will be ice-free once the climate comes into balance with the higher levels.”

In his study, MacLeod analyzed the fossilized shells of 90 million-year-old planktic and benthic foraminifera, single-celled organisms about the size of a grain of salt. Measuring the ratios of different isotopes of oxygen and carbon in the fossils gives scientists information about past temperatures and other environmental conditions. The fossils, which were found in Tanzania, showed no evidence of cooling or changes in local water chemistry that would have been expected if a glacial event had occurred during that time period.

“We know that the carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels are rising currently and are at the highest they have been in millions of years. We have records of how conditions have changed as CO₂ levels have risen from 280 to 400 ppm, but I believe it also is important to know what could happen when those levels reach 600 to 1000 ppm,” MacLeod said. “At the rate that carbon dioxide levels are rising, we will reach 600 ppm around the end of this century. At that level of CO₂, will ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica be stable? If not, how will their melting affect the planet?”

In the study, MacLeod examined fossils of organisms that lived 90 million years ago. This photo is an image from a Scanning electron microscope of a planktic (left) and benthic (right) foraminifera from Tanzania. Both shells are less than 0.5 millimeters across. (Credit: University of Missouri)

Previously, many scientists have thought that doubling CO₂ levels would cause earth’s temperature to increase as much as 3 degrees Celsius, or approximately 6 degrees Fahrenheit. However, the temperatures MacLeod believes existed in Tanzania 90 million years ago are more consistent with predictions that a doubling of CO₂ levels would cause Earth’s temperature could rise an average of 6 degrees Celsius, or approximately 11 degrees Fahrenheit.

“While studying the past can help us predict the future, other challenges with modern warming still exist,” MacLeod said. “The Late Cretaceous climate was very warm, but the Earth adjusted as changes occurred over millions of years. We’re seeing the same size changes, but they are happening over a couple of hundred years, maybe 10,000 times faster. How that affects the equation is a big and difficult question.”

MacLeod’s study was published in the October issue of the journal Geology.

Seismologists Puzzle Over Largest Deep Earthquake Ever Recorded

September 22nd, 2013

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A magnitude 8.3 earthquake that struck deep beneath the Sea of Okhotsk on May 24, 2013, has left seismologists struggling to explain how it happened. At a depth of about 609 kilometers (378 miles), the intense pressure on the fault should inhibit the kind of rupture that took place.

“It’s a mystery how these earthquakes happen. How can rock slide against rock so fast while squeezed by the pressure from 610 kilometers of overlying rock?” said Thorne Lay, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Lay is coauthor of a paper, published in the September 20 issue of Science, analyzing the seismic waves from the Sea of Okhotsk earthquake. First author Lingling Ye, a graduate student working with Lay at UC Santa Cruz, led the seismic analysis, which revealed that this was the largest deep earthquake ever recorded, with a seismic moment 30 percent larger than that of the next largest, a 1994 earthquake 637 kilometers beneath Bolivia.

The May 24, 2013 Mw 8.3 earthquake beneath the Sea of Okhotsk, Russia, occurred as a result of normal faulting at a depth of approximately 600 km (portion of USGS poster). (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey)

Deep earthquakes occur in the transition zone between the upper mantle and lower mantle, from 400 to 700 kilometers below the surface. They result from stress in a deep subducted slab where one plate of Earth’s crust dives beneath another plate. Such deep earthquakes usually don’t cause enough shaking on the surface to be hazardous, but scientifically they are of great interest.

The energy released by the Sea of Okhotsk earthquake produced vibrations recorded by several thousand seismic stations around the world. Ye, Lay, and their coauthors determined that it released three times as much energy as the 1994 Bolivia earthquake, comparable to a 35 megaton TNT explosion. The rupture area and rupture velocity were also much larger. The rupture extended about 180 kilometers, by far the longest rupture for any deep earthquake recorded, Lay said. It involved shear faulting with a fast rupture velocity of about 4 kilometers per second (about 9,000 miles per hour), more like a conventional earthquake near the surface than other deep earthquakes. The fault slipped as much as 10 meters, with average slip of about 2 meters.

“It looks very similar to a shallow event, whereas the Bolivia earthquake ruptured very slowly and appears to have involved a different type of faulting, with deformation rather than rapid breaking and slippage of the rock,” Lay said.

The researchers attributed the dramatic differences between these two deep earthquakes to differences in the age and temperature of the subducted slab. The subducted Pacific plate beneath the Sea of Okhotsk (located between the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Russian mainland) is a lot colder than the subducted slab where the 1994 Bolivia earthquake occurred.

“In the Bolivia event, the warmer slab resulted in a more ductile process with more deformation of the rock,” Lay said.

The Sea of Okhotsk earthquake may have involved re-rupture of a fault in the plate produced when the oceanic plate bent down into the Kuril-Kamchatka subduction zone as it began to sink. But the precise mechanism for initiating shear fracture under huge confining pressure remains unclear. The presence of fluid can lubricate the fault, but all of the fluids should have been squeezed out of the slab before it reached that depth.

“If the fault slips just a little, the friction could melt the rock and that could provide the fluid, so you would get a runaway thermal effect. But you still have to get it to start sliding,” Lay said. “Some transformation of mineral forms might give the initial kick, but we can’t directly detect that. We can only say that it looks a lot like a shallow event.”

Geologists Simulate Deep Earthquakes in Lab

September 21st, 2013

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More than 20 years ago, geologist Harry Green, now a distinguished professor of the graduate division at the University of California, Riverside, and colleagues discovered a high-pressure failure mechanism that they proposed then was the long-sought mechanism of very deep earthquakes (earthquakes occurring at more than 400 km depth).

The result was controversial because seismologists could not find a seismic signal in Earth that could confirm the results.

Seismologists have now found the critical evidence. Indeed, beneath Japan, they have even imaged the tell-tale evidence and showed that it coincides with the locations of deep earthquakes.

In the Sept. 20 issue of the journal Science, Green and colleagues show just how such deep earthquakes can be simulated in the laboratory.

“We confirmed essentially all aspects of our earlier experimental work and extended the conditions to significantly higher pressure,” Green said. “What is crucial, however, is that these experiments are accomplished in a new type of apparatus that allows us to view and analyze specimens using synchrotron X-rays in the premier laboratory in the world for this kind of experiments — the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory.”

This image shows olivine crystal of a sample used to simulate deep earthquakes. The olivine contains small crystals of pyroxene within it that have been cut by “nanofaults.” The numbers each show the parts of a pyroxene crystal that has been cut and displaced along a “nanofault.” (Credit: Green Lab, UC Riverside.)

The ability to do such experiments has now allowed scientists like Green to simulate the appropriate conditions within Earth and record and analyze the “earthquakes” in their small samples in real time, thus providing the strongest evidence yet that this is the mechanism by which earthquakes happen at hundreds of kilometers depth.

The origin of deep earthquakes fundamentally differs from that of shallow earthquakes (earthquakes occurring at less than 50 km depth). In the case of shallow earthquakes, theories of rock fracture rely on the properties of coalescing cracks and friction.

“But as pressure and temperature increase with depth, intracrystalline plasticity dominates the deformation regime so that rocks yield by creep or flow rather than by the kind of brittle fracturing we see at smaller depths,” Green explained. “Moreover, at depths of more than 400 kilometers, the mineral olivine is no longer stable and undergoes a transformation resulting in spinel. a mineral of higher density”

The research team focused on the role that phase transformations of olivine might play in triggering deep earthquakes. They performed laboratory deformation experiments on olivine at high pressure and found the “earthquakes” only within a narrow temperature range that simulates conditions where the real earthquakes occur in Earth.

“Using synchrotron X-rays to aid our observations, we found that fractures nucleate at the onset of the olivine to spinel transition,” Green said. “Further, these fractures propagate dynamically so that intense acoustic emissions are generated. These phase transitions in olivine, we argue in our research paper, provide an attractive mechanism for how very deep earthquakes take place.”

Green was joined in the study by Alexandre Schubnel at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, France; Fabrice Brunet at the Université de Grenoble, France; and Nadège Hilairet, Julian Gasc and Yanbin Wang at the University of Chicago, Ill.

Oldest and Youngest Stag-Moose in North America

September 20th, 2013

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Matthew Hill has identified countless bones found by farmers, fishermen, rock hounds and heavy equipment operators. Most of the remains turn out to be deer, bison, horse or cow bones, or simply odd looking rocks. But some discoveries turn out to be highly unusual, as was the case with an antler from an extinct Ice Age animal known as a stag-moose or elk-moose.

“At first, I was puzzled. I knew it did not belong to a white-tailed deer, elk or caribou. It looked sort of like a moose antler, but not quite — it was different,” Hill said. “I suspected it might be stag-moose, so I sent a picture to a colleague at the Illinois State Museum to compare it with specimens in their collections. He confirmed my suspicion.”

The discovery inspired Hill, an associate professor of anthropology at Iowa State University, to learn more about when the animal was in Iowa and search for additional specimens. Specifically, he wanted to determine the age of the antler and two other specimens he located. So he carefully cut a small cube from each specimen and sent them off to an Arizona lab for radiocarbon dating.

This stag-moose antler found near Parkersburg is between 12,600-12,800 years old. It ties a specimen from Wisconsin as the youngest record of a stag-moose. (Credit: Bob Elbert)

The results far exceeded Hill’s expectations. Turns out, one of the samples is more than 30,000 years old, making it the oldest specimen of a stag-moose ever recorded in North America. The results of the radiocarbon dating, which would not have been possible without a grant from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, are now fueling Hill’s curiosity and new research.

“It means that these animals were here before the glaciers covered central Iowa, and that they returned for a short time after the glaciers retreated as well,” Hill said. “Still, we don’t know a whole lot about the ecology of these animals. When they appeared, their numbers on the landscape, the cause of their demise, and what other animals they were living with side-by-side? There are just a whole lot of questions and this will be a great opportunity to learn more.”

Such discoveries often start with a phone call. Hill fields dozens of calls each year from people across the state with questions for him about a bone or a skull. In fact, the stag-moose antler that sparked Hill’s interest was discovered by an Ames man, who was searching the South Skunk River near Ada Hayden Park for remains. Radiocarbon dating determined the antler to be 13,400-13,700 years old.

The 30,000-year-old specimen was found in the 1970s by a gravel pit operator working near Jester Park in Polk County. It was donated to the State Historical Museum in Des Moines, where it is on display. The third specimen, located near Parkersburg, is part of a personal collection. Hill said the animal lived 12,600 to 12,800 years ago, and tied a specimen from north-central Wisconsin for the youngest record of the stag-moose. What he finds most exciting is that the age of the Parkersburg specimen suggests the first people to occupy Iowa — so-called Clovis hunters — may have preyed on the beast.

Flood, drought ideal for discovery

Drought conditions this summer and last generated even more calls as the dry river and creek beds exposed a treasure chest of specimens dislodged during earlier floods. Hill’s research depends, in part, on what others find that he can analyze and study.

“Recent weather patterns have been very conducive to finding specimens. Flooding removed vegetation from cut banks and sand bars, and drought has lowered water levels significantly,” Hill said. “There are a lot of people in Iowa who canoe, fish and spend time on sandbars, and they find things. I can’t walk every sandbar in the state, but a lot of people do. The farmers, the fishermen, the canoers are the eyes and ears in the field for people like myself.”

An email from a South Dakota farmer led to one of Hill’s largest and most diverse bone collections. Boxes containing everything from leg bones and teeth to skulls and antlers cover nearly every open space in his lab and fill a small storage closet. Hill said the farmer collected the 1,600-plus specimens, over an eight-month period following the 2011 flood. He found them in a sandbar deposited in his field along the Missouri River.

While none of the bones belong to the extinct stag-moose, the collection does include several extinct mammal and turtle remains that are millions of years old. Hill and his students will use the items to better understand the formation of bone accumulations and how the animals lived and died. But it’s not just Hill’s students who are eager to learn more about the bones.

“The people making these discoveries want to know about their specimens, too, as opposed to just putting them on their mantel,” Hill said. “Animals die on the landscape, they get buried, and rivers meander around and erode and rebury remains. It’s the formation of the fossil record and that’s what we’re interested in.”

What is a stag-moose?

The moose is still common in parts of North America, but its extinct ancestor is one many people would not recognize. Hill said the stag-moose is a part of the Cervalces genus, which lived during the Ice Age, and was a rather unusual-looking creature.

“It had the body of a moose, a face like an elk and the males had an antler rack that’s like neither. The antlers are goofy, the shaft goes straight out from the side of the head for a ways, and then develops into two or three palms that sprout multiple tines. No two are alike,” Hill said. “I think they’re just cool.”

Now with these dates, Hill can gain a better understanding of the time period when the stag-moose was in Iowa.