Latest Historical geology Stories

Grayling Industries provides IBC liners to help scientists simulate "Snowball Earth". Alpharetta, GA (PRWEB) January 18, 2011 Snowball Earth is what climate researchers call a period in Earths history that occurred approximately 600 million years ago when the planet may have been covered in ice from the poles to the equator. Dr. Bonnie Light is a Physicist IV and Affiliate Assistant Professor who is currently working on a project to study one aspect of the physics of sea ice pertinent to...

Researchers in Britain and Australia have discovered evidence that parts of the open ocean may have experienced a catastrophic global freeze some 700 million years ago, which nearly wiped out life on Earth.The event, dubbed "Snowball Earth", created such turbulent seas that microorganisms barely survived, and created conditions so harsh that most life is believed to have perished, the scientists said.The researchers claim to have found deposits in the remote Flinders Ranges in South Australia...

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A team of scientists have discovered that evidence linking the "Snowball Earth" glacial events to the emergence of complex life.The Snowball Earth hypothesis states that the Earth was covered from pole to pole by a thick sheet of ice lasting, on several occasions, for millions of years. These glaciations were the most severe in Earth history. They occurred 750 to 580 million years ago. The researchers argue that the oceans in the aftermath of these events were rich in...

Earth today is one of the most active planets in the Solar System, and was probably even more so during the early stages of its life. Thanks to the plate tectonics that continue to shape our planet's surface, remnants of crust from Earth's formative years are rare, but not impossible to find. A paper published in Nature Sept. 2 examines how some ancient rocks have resisted being recycled into Earth's convecting interior.Throughout the world there exist regions of ancient crust, referred to as...

The Gondwana supercontinent underwent a 60-degree rotation across Earth's surface during the Early Cambrian period, according to new evidence uncovered by a team of Yale University geologists. Gondwana made up the southern half of Pangaea, the giant supercontinent that constituted the Earth's landmass before it broke up into the separate continents we see today. The study, which appears in the August issue of the journal Geology, has implications for the environmental conditions that...

For insight into what can happen when the Earth's carbon cycle is altered -- a cause and consequence of climate change -- scientists can look to an event that occurred some 720 million years ago.New data from a Princeton University-led team of geologists suggest that an episode called "snowball Earth," which may have covered the continents and oceans in a thick sheet of ice, produced a dramatic change in the carbon cycle. This change in the carbon cycle, in turn, may have triggered...

Shares Listed: Toronto Stock Exchange - Ticker Symbol - ARZ NYSE Amex - Ticker Symbol - AZK U.S. Registration: (File 001-31893) VANCOUVER, April 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - Aurizon Mines Ltd. (TSX: ARZ; NYSE Amex: AZK) is pleased to announce that a gold exploration drilling program will commence shortly on its 100 percent owned Kipawa Gold-Rare Earth project, in north-western Quebec, Canada. The work planned includes 6,500 metres of drilling, comprising twenty-six (26) holes, on three (3)...

Scientists find signs of 'snowball Earth' amidst early animal evolutionGeologists have found evidence that sea ice extended to the equator 716.5 million years ago, bringing new precision to a "snowball Earth" event long suspected to have taken place around that time.Led by scientists at Harvard University, the team reports on its work this week in the journal Science. The new findings -- based on an analysis of ancient tropical rocks that are now found in remote northwestern Canada...

The collision between the Siberian Plate and North China Plate was a significant geological event in earth history, which led to the final closure of the Paleoasian Ocean and the formation of the Eurasian continent. Despite numerous research efforts in recent decades, the precise time of this event has remained a puzzle until now. New evidence in helping settle this issue is provided by Prof. Deng Shenghui and his colleagues in their paper newly published in Science in China (2009,...

Environmental selectivity during three of the "˜Big Five' mass extinction events focus of two paleontologists' latest research. Arnie Miller, University of Cincinnati professor of paleontology in the McMicken College of Arts & Sciences, and co-author Michael Foote of the University of Chicago publish their research in the Nov. 20 issue of Science with their paper, "Epicontinental Seas Versus Open-Ocean Settings: The Kinetics of Mass Extinction and Origination."For many years,...