Feature Channels: Geology

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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.

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On Earth, massive chasm would reach between Detroit, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

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Boise State University recently received a $954,000 award from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to collect high-quality elevation (lidar) data to assess natural hazards across more than 2,500 square miles in Idaho.

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A paper in Nature Communications confirms a major feature in the formation of large igneous provinces — massive worldwide volcanic eruptions that created incredibly high volumes of lava and triggered environmental catastrophes and mass extinctions from 170 to 90 million years ago.

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Saint Louis University researchers report new information about conditions that can cause the earth’s tectonic plates to sink into the earth.

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Researchers at the University of Notre Dame found evidence of varying ratios of boron isotopes in igneous rocks, known as carbonatites, of different ages.

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Tools that track underground contaminants and speed carbon capture technology development are among R&D Magazine’s 100 most innovative scientific breakthroughs of the year.

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Researcher Don Hood from LSU and colleagues from collaborating universities studied an unusual region on Mars -- an area with high elevation called Thaumasia Planum. They analyzed the geography and mineralogy of this area they termed Greater Thaumasia, which is about the size of North America. They also studied the chemistry of this area based on Gamma Ray Spectrometer data collected by the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, which was launched in 2001. What they found was the mountain ridge that outlines Greater Thaumasia was most likely created by a chain of volcanoes. The results were published recently in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets.

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The scroll-like structure of the newly discovered mineral merelaniite grows into tiny, silver-gray whiskers. A physicist from Michigan Tech found the mineral on a sample of larger minerals from the Merelani Mining District in Tanzania.

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A comet strike may have triggered the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a rapid warming of the Earth caused by an accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide 56 million years ago, which offers analogs to global warming today.

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In a paper published today in Scientific Reports, Assistant Professor of Geology Mainak Mookherjee explores how feldspar, one of the most important minerals in the Earth’s crust, changes under pressure. Typically, materials become stiffer when pressure is applied, but Mookherjee found that these pale-colored crystals actually become softer under extreme pressures.

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How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it’s missing. That’s what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their collaborator did, and their explanation for where the mass went significantly changes prevailing ideas about what can happen when continents collide.