Latest Historical geology Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Eric Prokopi, a Florida fossils dealer, has pled guilty to smuggling charges. He has agreed to give up the $1 million Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton seized by the U.S. government earlier this year after he attempted to auction it through Heritage Auctions. Prokopi is giving up "Ty," the T. bataar that will eventually be returned to Mongolia, along with six other dinosaurs and various other bones in a deal that might win him a little...
Compares glacial to global warming. Marlborough, MA, (PRWEB) December 13, 2012 “Tale of the Northwest Passage” has been published to YouTube. This third video in a series compares current climate change to changes observed on a glacial scale. It is the second available on YouTube. “These videos were created as a scientific appendix for the hard Science Fiction eBook Time Arc, a cautionary tale of time travel, and a compelling tale of global warming,” said Frank Paine, video...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Mysterious multicellular fossils believed to be ancient sea creatures may actually be some of the earliest land-dwelling organisms, according to a paper published online on Wednesday in the journal Nature. The controversial hypothesis has been fiercely criticized, with some paleontologists flatly rejecting the idea, but if true, the finding would push back life's transition from sea to land by as much as 100 million years or more....
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Despite the name, a new species of lizard reported about in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is not related to our President, because it went extinct when the giant asteroid hit Earth millions of years ago. Obamadon gracilis was one of the lizard species that suffered from the asteroid event that ended the reign of the dinosaurs 65.5 million years ago. Previous studies suggested that some snake...
University of Florida A new study co-authored by a University of Florida researcher provides the first direct chronological test of sequence stratigraphy, a powerful tool for exploring Earth’s natural resources. The model allows geologists to better understand how sedimentary rocks are related to one another in time and space and predict what types of rocks are located in different areas. The information may help scientists more reliably interpret various aspects of Earth’s history...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The heat is rising and all nations around the globe will likely feel the sweltering effects of a 7.2-degree F increase by the end of the century, unless more is done now to curb climate change. But while the world as a whole will feel this climatic impact, none will suffer more than the world’s poorest countries, according to a new report by the World Bank. This global temperature increase will trigger a cascade of cataclysmic...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A rapid response between global temperatures and ice volume/sea-level that could lead to sea-levels rising by over 3 feet have been revealed by a new study from the University of Southampton. Global ice-volume variability has been one of the main feedback mechanisms in climate change during the last few million years. This is because of the strong reflective properties of large ice sheets. Scientists reconstruct ice volume...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online Food shortages, natural disasters, energy supply issues and the spread of epidemics are some of the possible climate-related perils the U.S. military needs to prepare to deal with, the National Academies claim in a new report released Friday. According to Suzanne Goldenberg, U.S. Environment Correspondent with The Guardian, the report advises American defense personnel to "start planning for natural disasters, sea-level rise,...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Climate scientists have long debated whether floodwaters from melting of the Laurentide Ice Sheet flowed northwest into the Arctic first, or east via the Gulf of St. Lawrence to weaken ocean thermohaline circulation and have a frigid effect on global climate. This debate concerning the melt, which ushered in the last major cold episode about 12,900 years ago, has been raging for about 30 years. A research team from the University of...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online After a major extinction event occurred 250 million years ago, many species that survived had a long, slow recovery, which was exacerbated by the effects of global warming, according to a new study presented at the Geological Society of America meeting in North Carolina this week. Ohio State University doctoral student Alexa Sedlacek, in his study, found that rising temperatures, high levels of greenhouse gases and a more acidic ocean,...
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...
