Category
How Fossil Fuels Killed the Dinosaurs
Posted on Tuesday, May 6, 2008 @ 1:16 pm by Dave Schumaker
A team of researchers from New Zealand have published a new paper on the asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The paper talks about the layer of iridium and carbon particles found at the K/T boundary and proposes a new idea on how the carbon particles were originally formed. It was thought that these carbon particles were the result of global forest fires. The new research shows that the particles are actually small spheres, called carbon cenospheres, and can only be created under conditions of immense heat and pressure. They are commonly associated with heavy industrial production facilities.
The beads, known to geologists as carbon cenospheres, cannot be formed through the combustion of plant matter, contradicting a hypothesis that the cenospheres are the charred remains of an Earth on fire. If confirmed, the discovery suggests environmental circumstances accompanying the 65-million-year-old extinction event were slightly less dramatic than previously thought.
“Carbon embedded in the rocks was vaporized by the impact, eventually forming new carbon structures in the atmosphere,” said Indiana University Bloomington geologist Simon Brassell, study coauthor and former adviser to the paper’s lead author, Mark Harvey.
For more information, see also this article from Stuff.co.nz.
[Via ScienceDaily]
Weekend Adventures - Capitola Fossils
Posted on Sunday, April 27, 2008 @ 11:42 am by Dave Schumaker
On the way back from camping in Monterey last weekend, some friends and I decided to stop by Capitola Beach, in the small beach town of Capitola, California (just east of Santa Cruz). We last visited Capitola in 2005.
It’s a popular destination for tourists and beginning surfers, but it’s also an excellent spot for those interested in collecting Pliocene aged marine fossils that range from common mollusks to seal bones and even whale bones. The best time to visit the beach is at low tide, when the bedrock outcrops usually hidden by surf are accessible. Because of the constant erosion of the cliffs around Capitola, each visit is a new experience in terms of what you will findsee.
We managed to take a few photos of the area as well.
Pieces of bone.
Shell fragments (possible storm bed?).
Larger bones.
Capitola Cliffs
Cliff Face
Shell fragments
Broken Shells.
And what about the geology of Capitola? This PDF file from the Moss Landing Marine Labs explains the deposits.
Here Pliocene Purisima Formation, described by Cummings et al., (1962) as abuff-yellow to light brown and gray, fine-grained sandstone and siltstone, can be seenhere eroding away. This formation has been dated at 3 -1 Ma. At this locality, thePurisima Formation contains numerous dense layers of fossilized mollusk coquinas,ranging from 3-20 cm in thickness. These are interbedded with thin to thickargillitic sandstone beds and thin phosphatic silt and mudstone beds. The alternating fineto coarse-grained bedding is believed to reflect transgressive and regressive periodsassociated with uplift due to wrench tectonics and sea level changes (Clark et al., 1979).Faulting within the formation can be recognized based upon the existence of slickensidespreserved in some of the fractures
Also, here is a fantastic photo gallery by Paul Slocombe and taken in 2007 featuring many different types of Capitola fossils.
All photos taken by Dave Schumaker
More Information:
Capitola Beach 360 Degree VR Photo
Capitola Beach Coastal Monitoring Program [USGS]
Capitola, California [Google Maps]
Collecting Fossils in California
Triceratops Still Looking For A New Home
Posted on Thursday, April 17, 2008 @ 1:13 pm by Dave Schumaker
Back in March, we wrote about an upcoming Christie’s auction on a triceratops skeleton found in South Dakota. The auction was yesterday and sadly, the winning bid did not meet the owner’s reserve price of $800,000. The highest bid for the specimen was only a paltry $784,000.
Source: Christie’s
It was the first major dinosaur skeleton to go on public auction since a Tyrannosaurus rex dubbed Sue, after the woman who found it, was sold for $8 million by Sotheby’s in New York in 1997.
The triceratops bidding started at 420,000 euros (about $670,000), but when the hammer came down, the top bid was $784,000, which Christie’s officials later said was shy of the $800,000 minimum set by the owner. Officials at the auction house would not say who submitted the top bid.
Gilles Fauchon, 65, said he collected pledges of almost $100,000 from “dinosaur fans” to try to bring the beast home to his town along the French-German border, even though he realized he had no chance of winning. “I’m here for the sport” he said.
[Via Washington Post]
More Information:
Christie’s - Triceratops
Dinochick Blogs - The Selling of Fossils
Evolution of Animal Life Was Delayed
Posted on Thursday, March 27, 2008 @ 6:50 am by Dave Schumaker
An international team of researchers lead by the University of California, Riverside have released a study on the chemistry of early Earth’s oceans, and how that chemistry may have inhibited the evolution of animal life by up to 2 billion years. The team tracked levels of molybdenum in black shales from this time period and found the amounts to be lower than expected. While life first evolved around 2.4 billion years ago, the first complex animal life didn’t arise until about 600 million years ago.
The researchers found significant, firsthand evidence for a molybdenum-depleted ocean relative to the high levels measured in modern, oxygen-rich seawater.
“These molybdenum depletions may have retarded the development of complex life such as animals for almost two billion years of Earth history,” Lyons said. “The amount of molybdenum in the ocean probably played a major role in the development of early life. As in the case of iron today, molybdenum can be thought of as a life-affirming micronutrient that regulates the biological cycling of nitrogen in the ocean.
“At the same time, molybdenum’s low abundance in the early ocean tracks the global extent of oxygen-poor seawater and implies that the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere was still low.
Mummified Dinosaur
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 @ 11:46 am by Dave Schumaker
CNN posted an article on a mummified dinosaur found in North Dakota in 2004. The dinosaur, an Edmontosaurus (duck-billed dinosaur), was unearthed in 2004 and originally discovered by Tyler Lyson. Lyson is a 25 year old doctoral paleontology student at Yale University and discovered the specimen on his uncle’s ranch in 1999.
Researchers have used the world’s largest CT scanner, operated by the Boeing Co. in California and used to examine space shuttle parts, to get a better look at what is encased in the rumpled mass of sandstone.
“This is the fourth dinosaur mummy that’s ever been found in the world of any significance,” said Stephen Begin, a Michigan consultant on the project. “It may turn out to be one of the best mummies, because of the quality of the skin that we’re finding and the extent of the skin that’s on the specimen.”
Dakota was moved to the museum early last month and is currently surrounded by precariously perched desk lamps and a machine to suck up dust. State paleontologist John Hoganson, of the North Dakota Geological Survey, said it will take a year, maybe more, to uncover it.