Latest Historical geology Stories
Harvard researchers are adding statistical nuance to our understanding of how modern and historical temperatures compare. Through developing a statistical model of Arctic temperature and how it relates to instrumental and proxy records derived from trees, ice cores, and lake sediments, Martin Tingley, a research associate in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Peter Huybers, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, have shown that the warmest summers in the last two...
MIAMI, April 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Fernando Lorenzo, Minister of Economy and Finance of Uruguay and Jose W. Fernandez, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, are confirmed keynote speakers at the Second Annual Trade Americas Expo: Creating an Environment for Business Opportunities in the Hemisphere, hosted by Latin Trade Group in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), June 20 - 21 at the JW Marriott Marquis in Miami. Trade...
Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online While these never actually walked the Earth, and didn’t fully develop or hatch, a trove of dinosaur embryos could give researchers rare insight into their development. Paleontologists working in China recently unearthed what could be the earliest collection of fossilized dinosaur embryos to date, and it has provided the researchers with a new opportunity to study ongoing growth patterns and development of the prehistoric species....
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers say that there was an abrupt and widespread climate change that took place in the Sahara Desert 5,000 years ago. About 5,000 years ago, the Sahara was full of landscape and vegetation, as well as numerous lakes. Ancient cave paintings in the region depict hippos in watering holes, and herds of elephants and giraffes. However, today this region is barren and inhospitable. The Sahara's "green" era lasted from 11,000 to...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Earth's tropical climate history has been revealed in unprecedented detail – year by year, for almost 1,800 years – by two annually dated ice cores drawn from the tropical Peruvian Andes. In 2003, a research team led by Ohio State University retrieved core samples from a Peruvian ice cap. They noticed some startling similarities to ice cores they had gathered from Tibet and the Himalayas. Even though the cores were taken from...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Temperature patterns during Earth’s last prolonged global “hot spell” some 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago differed markedly from those of modern times, suggesting current climate models may need to be adjusted to improve future predictions, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. The Earth was warmer during that time - known as the Pliocene Epoch - than it is today, and had higher carbon dioxide...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers from the University of Colorado claim to have uncovered new evidence supporting the notion that a Manhattan-sized asteroid collided with the Earth some 66 million years ago, triggering a global firestorm that would have led to the extinction of 80 percent of the planet’s species. According to Douglas Robertson of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and colleagues, the firestorm...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online One of the most popular theories on the disappearance of the dinosaurs surrounds the 110 mile-wide Chicxulub crater in Mexico. Many scientists believe the extinction was caused by an asteroid that crashed into Earth, leaving only a massive crater behind. However, a group of American scientists is presenting a theory that the culprit was actually a speeding comet, not a relatively slow-moving asteroid as many theories assert....
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team of American scientists believe they have solved a geological mystery buried about 100 miles below California. According to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, geologists from Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Rhode Island and the University of Oregon identified the source of anomalous seismic readings as a fragment of the Farallon tectonic plate, which was pushed deep into the...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Deforestation is less likely to occur in areas of the Amazon rainforest that have been placed under strict protection than those that allow for controlled resource extraction, according to a new study published Monday in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Furthermore, lead author Christoph Nolte, a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources...
Latest Historical geology Reference Libraries
Rainforests are forests that are characterized by high levels of rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum usual annual rainfall of about 68 to 78 inches. The monsoon trough, or otherwise known as the intertropical convergence zone, holds an important role in producing the climatic conditions that are essential for the Earth’s tropical rainforests. About 40 to 75 percent of all biotic species are native to the rainforests. It’s been estimated that there might be many millions of...
Climate change is a substantial and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods of time ranging from decades to millions of years. It might be a change in the average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions. Climate change is a result of factors that include oceanic processes, biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received buy Earth, volcanic eruptions, and plate tectonics, and human induced alterations...
The Neoproterozoic is the third of three subdivisions of the Proterozoic Eon (occurring from 1 billion years ago to 542 million years ago). This terminal era of the Proterozoic is itself divided into three sub-periods called the Tonian, Cryogenian, and Ediacaran Periods. The most severe glaciation known in the geologic record occurred during the Cryogenian Period, when ice sheets reached the equator and formed a possible “Snowball Earth.” And the earliest fossils of multi-cellular life...
The Paleoproterozoic is the first of three subdivisions of the Proterozoic Eon (occurring from 2.5 billion to 1.6 billion years ago (Ga). This period is marked by the first stabilization of the continents, and also when cyanobacteria--a type of bacteria that uses biochemical processes of photosynthesis to produce oxygen--evolved. Experts have found paleontological evidence that during at least part of the Paleoproterozoic era, about 1.8 Ga, the earth year was about 450 days long, with days...
The Archean (formerly Archaeozoic) is a geologic eon between the Hadean and Proterozoic eons. The Archean Eon begins at roughly 3.8 billion years ago (Ga) and ends at about 2.5 Ga. But unlike all other geological ages, which are based on stratigraphy, The Archean eon is defined chronometrically. The lower boundary of 3.8 Ga has also not been officially recognized by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. The name Archean is derived from the ancient Greek (Arkhe), meaning...
