Posts Tagged ‘WFS’

Dinosaur Deaths Outsourced to India?

A series of monumental volcanic eruptions in India may have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, not a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico. The eruptions, which created the gigantic Deccan Traps lava beds of India, are now the prime suspect in the most famous and persistent paleontological murder mystery, say scientists who […]

Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms

A scanning electron microscope survey was initiated to determine if the previously reported findings of “dinosaurian soft tissues” could be identified in situ within the bones. The results obtained allowed a reinterpretation of the formation and preservation of several types of these “tissues” and their content. Mineralized and non-mineralized coatings were found extensively in the […]

Demoting a dinosaur

Azendohsaurus just shed its dinosaur affiliation. A careful new analysis of A. madagaskarensis—this time based on the entire skull rather than on just teeth and jaws—aligns this 230-million-year-old animal with a different and very early branch on the reptile evolutionary tree. Many aspects of Azendohsaurus are far more primitive than previously assumed, which in turn means that its plant-eating […]

Deep Earth Quakes

Deep earthquakes were discovered in the 1920s, but they remain a subject of contention today. The reason is simple: they aren’t supposed to happen. Yet they account for more than 20 percent of all earthquakes.Shallow earthquakes require solid rocks to occur—more specifically, cold, brittle rocks. Only these can store up elastic strain along a geologic fault, […]

300m-year-old forest preserved in ash :’Chinese Pompeii’

The researchers were able to “reconstruct” nearly 1,000 sq m of the forest’s trees and plant distributions. This rare insight into how the region once looked is described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The excavations sampled three sites across a large expanse that was covered with about a metre of ash. Due to […]

Hot Mantle May Prop Up the Seafloor

The seas may be rising due to climate change, but most of the seafloor is also dropping as part of the natural dynamics of Earth’s crust. The question that has dogged scientists for decades, however, is why hasn’t the ocean bottom sunk faster? An exhaustive analysis of the Pacific Ocean seabed may provide at least […]

X-Rays Reveals Origins of Volcano Hot Spots

Scientists have used X-rays to expose the extreme conditions in the Earth’s core that lead to volcanoes, offering observational evidence that volcanic hot spots are indeed caused by giant plumes of magma flowing upward from within the Earth. Most volcanoes are found where continental tectonic plates push or pull against one another, but volcanic hot […]

Whale fossil discovered on Flint River

A Georgia Southern University team of professors and students Monday started excavating the fossil of a whale on the shore of the Flint River. The geology dig has been in the works for two years, and the team calls it a stunningly significant find. Did you know that there were whales at one time in […]

Giant Jurassic fleas drank the blood of dinosaurs and pterosaurs

Fossils unearthed in China reveal that the insects were up to 10 times as large as modern fleas Fossil hunters have uncovered the remains of giant Jurassic fleas that sucked the blood of ancient beasts more than 100m years ago. The oversized insects had long, serrated sucking tubes for piercing dinosaur hides, and used spines on their bodies […]

Mojoceratops: New dinosaur species named for flamboyant frill

When Nicholas Longrich discovered a new dinosaur species with a heart-shaped frill on its head, he wanted to come up with a name just as flamboyant as the dinosaur’s appearance. Over a few beers with fellow paleontologists one night, he blurted out the first thing that came to mind: Mojoceratops. “It was just a joke, but […]