Feature Channels: Geology

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UND Geology Faculty and Students Get Another First-Hand Glimpse of Largest Space Rock Ever Found in State

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The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. But researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working alongside the University of Zurich, discovered that this extinction took place during a short ice age which preceded the global climate warming.

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The Newport-Inglewood and Rose Canyon faults had been considered separate systems but a new study shows that they are actually one continuous fault system running from San Diego Bay to Seal Beach in Orange County, then on land through the Los Angeles basin.

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Plumbing a 90 million-year-old layer cake of sedimentary rock in Colorado, a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University has found evidence confirming a critical theory of how the planets in our solar system behave in their orbits around the sun. The finding, published Feb. 23, 2017 in the journal Nature, is important because it provides the first hard proof for what scientists call the “chaotic solar system.”

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New work shows that interactions between iron and nickel under the extreme pressures and temperatures similar to a planetary interior can help scientists understand the period in our Solar System's youth when planets were forming and their cores were created.

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Rising temperatures could accelerate climate change by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide stored in ponds and increasing the methane they release, new research shows.

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Nicholas Warner, assistant professor of geology, was among planetary geologists recently presenting evidence to NASA scientists on the best Mars landing sites for the next rover mission, scheduled to launch in 2020.

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In bitter cold regions like northwestern Canada, permafrost has preserved relict ground-ice and vast glacial sedimentary stores in a quasi-stable state. These landscapes therefore retain a high potential for climate-driven transformation.

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Bias introduced through analyzing the magnetism of old rocks may not be giving geophysicists an accurate idea of how Earth's magnetic dynamo has functioned. A team led by Michigan Technological University shows there is a way to improve the methodology to get a better understanding of the planet's geodynamo.

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James Cook University scientists have helped discover the remnants of a massive undersea landslide on the Great Barrier Reef.

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Three new minerals discovered by a Michigan Tech alumnus are secondary crusts found in old uranium mines in southern Utah. They're bright, yellow and hard to find. Meet leesite, leószilárdite and redcanyonite.

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The amount of carbon in the Earth's mantle has been the subject of hot debate for decades.

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Where did the materials that make up the Earth and moon come from—and when did they arrive?

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Mountain regions of the world are under direct threat from human-induced climate change which could radically alter these fragile habitats, warn an international team of researchers.

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MACOMB, IL – For the past two years, Western Illinois University Assistant Professor of Geology Thomas Hegna has been part of a three-member team conducting research on what are believed to be the first-ever discovered trilobite eggs paired with a fossil of the segmented creature.

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One of nature's greatest mysteries - the 'Fairy Circles' of Namibia - may have been unravelled by researchers at the University of Strathclyde and Princeton University.

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A new University of Washington study finds that one of Alaska’s most abundant freshwater fish species is altering its breeding patterns in response to climate change, which could impact the ecology of northern lakes that already acutely feel the effects of a changing climate.

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For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven significantly by the additional force of heat drawn from the Earth’s core. The new findings also challenge the theory that underwater mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges are passive boundaries between moving plates. The findings show the East Pacific Rise, the Earth’s dominant mid-ocean ridge, is dynamic as heat is transferred.

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Interesting limestone rock found at Croatian Neanderthal site

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Fossils found in Morocco from the long-extinct group of sea creatures called trilobites, including rarely seen soft-body parts, may be previously unseen animals that left distinctive fossil ‘footprints’ around the ancient supercontinent Gondwana.

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Tiny microbes play a big role in cycling carbon and other key elements through our air, water, soil and sediment. Researchers who study these processes at Argonne National Laboratory have discovered that these microbial communities are significantly affected by the types of carbon “food” sources available. Their findings reveal that the type of carbon source affects not only the composition and activity of natural microbial communities, but also in turn the types of mineral products that form in their environment.

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As planning continues for humanity’s first visit to Mars, scientists still have much to learn about the planet’s physical makeup. By comparing current satellite images to similar shots of Earth, they are coming to understand how volcanic activity shaped the Red Planet, and extrapolating lessons learned to address concerns closer to home.

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A team of seismologists analyzing the data from 671 earthquakes that occurred between 30 and 280 miles beneath the Earth's surface in the Pacific Plate as it descended into the Tonga Trench were surprised to find a zone of intense earthquake activity in the downgoing slab. The pattern of the activity along the slab provided strong evidence that the earthquakes are sparked by the release of water at depth.

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Scientists discovered a new kind of water molecule whose shape has been altered to conform to the symmetry of the environment in which it is trapped.

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Exploring where liquid goes, even in winter

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Where is the geographic center of a state, country or a continent? It’s a question fraught with uncertainty. Do you include water in your calculation? What happens when the shoreline shifts? But to University at Buffalo geographer Peter Rogerson, the challenge of finding a middle doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

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Holidaymakers concerned about fresh volcanic eruptions causing flight-disrupting ash clouds across Northern Europe might be reassured by a study setting out the first reliable estimates of their frequency

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For the development of animals, nothing — with the exception of DNA — may be more important than oxygen in the atmosphere. A study now online in the February issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters links the rise in oxygen to a rapid increase in the burial of sediment containing large amounts of carbon-rich organic matter.

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A University of Iowa study finds the threat of flooding is growing in the northern half of the United States and declining in the South. The findings are based on water-height measurements at 2,042 stream and rivers, compared to NASA data showing the amount of water stored in the ground.

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A recent study by the University of Delaware's Jessica Warren and colleagues at two other universities provides a new data set that scientists can use to define a tectonic plate and predict future earthquake and volcanic hazards, where they might occur and how deep the devastation might be.

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A Washington University physicist practiced at finding tiny diamonds in stardust from the pre-solar universe has repeatedly failed to find them in Younger Dryas sedimentary layers, effectively discrediting the hypothesis that an exploding comet caused the sudden climate reversal at the end of the last Ice Age.

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University of Iowa scientist to give talk about mini shock waves on the moon

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The oceanic crust produced by the Earth today is significantly thinner than crust made 170 million years ago during the time of the supercontinent Pangea, according to University of Texas at Austin researchers.

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A University of Michigan-led team of geologists and engineers is mapping surface ruptures and some of the tens of thousands of landslides triggered by last month's magnitude-7.8 earthquake in New Zealand.

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Mountain glaciers move slowly and it has been had to pin an individual glacier's retreat to a change in global climate. A new method finds that for most of the glaciers studied the observed retreat is more than 99 percent likely due to climate change.

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University of Utah researchers will be among the approximately 24,000 scientists convening in San Francisco for the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union Dec. 12-16. Below are summaries of select presentations at the meeting, along with the time and date of the presentation and primary contact information. All times are in Pacific Standard Time.

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Using marine sediment cores containing isotopes of aluminum and beryllium, a group of international researchers has discovered that East Greenland experienced deep, ongoing glacial erosion over the past 7.5 million years. The research reconstructs ice sheet erosion dynamics in that region during the past 7.5 million years and has potential implications for how much the ice sheet will respond to future interglacial warming.

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New research opens up the deep history of the Greenland Ice Sheet, looking back millions of years farther than previous techniques allowed—and raises urgent questions about if the giant ice sheet might dramatically accelerate its melt-off in the near future.

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The study focused on the skeletal changes that occurred during growth in the small carnivorous dinosaur Coelophysis (SEE-lo-FY-sis), one of the earliest dinosaurs.

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Researchers at the University of California San Diego, the University of Colorado-Boulder, the University of Chicago and Argonne are the first to identify similarities in the way in which Komodo dragons and humans and their pets share microbes within closed environments.

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Tracking the speed of internal tides offers a cheap, simple way to monitor temperature changes throughout the world’s oceans.

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Geologists have for the first time seen and documented the Banda Detachment fault in eastern Indonesia and worked out how it formed.

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The island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa was largely unexplored seismically until recently. The first broadband seismic images of the island help solve a longstanding mystery: why are there volcanoes far from any tectonic boundary?

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A key glacier in Antarctica is breaking apart from the inside out, suggesting that the ocean is weakening ice on the edges of the continent.

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The Ohio State University doesn’t just make big plays—it measures exactly how big those plays are, and uses the data to teach students valuable lessons in science.

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New Study Finds Water Deeper In Planet than Scientists Previously Believed

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Around 1 per cent of the population carry a gene which could mean they have hearts ‘primed to fail’.

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Where’s the best place to start when retracing the life of a person who lived 4,000 years ago? Turns out, it’s simple -- you start at the beginning.