Latest Geochronology Stories
Isotope analysis provides accurate informationThe analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes embedded in tree rings may shed new light on past climate events in the Mackenzie Delta region of northern Canada.Scientists have long looked at the width of tree rings to estimate temperature levels of past years. Larger rings indicate more tree growth in a season, which translates into warmer summer temperatures. But the analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in tree rings can also provide accurate data...
In the film, "˜The Day After Tomorrow' the world enters the icy grip of a new glacial period within the space of just a few weeks. Now new research shows that this scenario may not be so far from the truth after all.William Patterson, from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, and his colleagues have shown that switching off the North Atlantic circulation can force the Northern hemisphere into a mini "˜ice age' in a matter of months. Previous work has indicated that this process would...
A new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages may have been higher than previously thoughtA new study of Antarctica's past climate reveals that temperatures during the warm periods between ice ages (interglacials) may have been higher than previously thought. The latest analysis of ice core records suggests that Antarctic temperatures may have been up to 6°C warmer than the present day.The findings, reported this week by...
Researchers spent two months this summer high in the Peruvian Andes and brought back two cores, the longest ever drilled from ice fields in the tropics.Ohio State glaciologist Lonnie Thompson said that this latest expedition focused on a yet-to-be-named ice field 5,364 meters (17,598 feet) above sea level in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range.The researchers hiked to a col, or saddle, between two adjacent peaks "“ Hualcán and Copa "“ set up camp and used a ground sensing radar to map...
In 2007 alone, it lost volume equivalent to draining San Francisco Bay every weekNot that long ago "“ the blink of a geologic eye "“ global temperatures were so warm that ice on Greenland could have been hard to come by. Today, the largest island in the world is covered with ice 1.6 miles thick. Even so, Greenland has become a hot spot for climate scientists. Why? Because tiny bubbles trapped in the ice layers may help resolve a fundamental question about global warming: how fast and how...
An analysis of sediment cores indicates that biological and chemical changes occurring at a remote Arctic lake are unprecedented over the past 200,000 years and likely are the result of human-caused climate change, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.While environmental changes at the lake over the past millennia have been shown to be tightly linked with natural causes of climate change -- like periodic, well-understood wobbles in Earth's orbit -- changes...
Scientists are taking a more in-depth view of how climate change could affect Antarctica's ice, and how even a small change in temperature could lead to a global rise in sea levels."If you're going to have even a few meters it will change the geography of the planet," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told Reuters."Greenland and Antarctica are two huge bodies of ice sitting on land that could really have very serious...
Will all of the ice on Greenland melt and flow out into the sea, bringing about a colossal rise in ocean levels on Earth, as the global temperature rises? The key concern is how stable the ice cap actually is and new Danish research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen can now show the evolution of the ice sheet 11,700 years back in time "“ all the way back to the start of our current warm period. The results are published in the esteemed journal Nature.Numerous...
An international team of scientists, led by Denmark, says it set a single-season deep ice core drilling record this summer in Greenland. The researchers, with the University of Colorado at Boulder as the lead U.S. institution, recovered more than a mile of ice core that is expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate change in the future. The project, known as the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, is being undertaken by 14 nations led by the University of...
A new international research effort on the Greenland ice sheet with the University of Colorado at Boulder as the lead U.S. institution set a record for single-season deep ice-core drilling this summer, recovering more than a mile of ice core that is expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate change in the future.The project, known as the North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling, or NEEM, is being undertaken by 14 nations and is led by the University of Copenhagen. The...
Latest Geochronology Reference Libraries
Image Caption: Head of Tenontosaurus, Institut de paléontologie humaine, Paris, France. Credit: Rémih/Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0) Tenontosaurus, meaning “sinew lizard”, is a genus of medium to large sized ornithopod dinosaur. The genus is known from the late Aptian to Albian ages of the middle Cretaceious period sediments of western North America, dating roughly between 115 to 108 million years ago. It was formerly thought to be a ‘hypsilophodont’, but since Hypsilophodontia is no...
Sharpirhynchia sharpi is a species of extinct brachiopod named after fossil collector Samuel Sharp (1814-1882). This species lived during the Lower Bathonian of the Middle Jurassic Period. It is found only in the United Kingdom, and numerous specimens have been taken from several sites, the first from Limekiln Quarry in Northampton, England. S. sharpi is roughly a half-inch long, with a slender beak and 21 to 31 ribs fanning out from the hinge. This lampshell brachiopod lived life as a...
Sauroposeidon, meaning “earthquake god lizard,” is a genus of sauropods dinosaur from the Aptian and Albian ages of the Early Cretaceous Period (110 million years ago). It was discovered in the southeast region of Atoka County, Oklahoma, not far from the border of Texas, in a claystone outcrop. The fossils were initially misidentified as pieces of petrified wood when they were found in 1994. A more detailed analysis in 1999 revealed they were truly dinosaurian bones. They were formally...
Qiaowanlong is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Albian stage of the Early Cretaceous Period (100 million years ago). It was discovered in the Yujinzi Basin of Gansu, China in 2007. It came from the geological formation called the Xinminpu Group. Qiaowanlong is known from articulated cervical (neck) vertebrae and a right pelvic girdle, as well as several unidentified bone fragments. It was the first brachiosaurid to have been found from China. Qiaowanlong is estimated to have been...
Qantassaurus is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur from the late Aptian to early Albian age of the Early Cretaceous Period (115 million years ago). It lived in Australia when the continent was still south of the Antarctic Circle, and was still part of the supercontinent Gondwana. Qantassaurus was discovered in 1996 during the third annual field season of the Dinosaur Dreaming Project, a dig jointly run by Monash University and Museum Victoria. It was found in the intertidal site known as Flat...
