Articles

winonalakefossils

Here’s a nice chunk of #coral from #winonalake #indiana

wasatchmaximus

Ebb and Flow

—~—

It’s not uncommon for me to photobomb my own timelapses, especially when the 8mm fisheye in on there. Can’t escape that angle! Not sure why I hung my jacket on the post, it was 4am 🤤. Still worth losing some sleep to see the stars

surdechile

Aquí está el sobrevuelo de esta mañana, hecho por las autoridades creo, viendo el cráter del

#Villarrica

. Se ve claro el lago de lava cerca de la superficie, con una costra más fría en su superficie, y dos “conitos” dentro. Sigue inestable el volcán, en

#AlertaNaranja

Gentileza 📷Cristian Farias

organicpunkrocks

Worst lighting ever.. but I just snagged this entire tray of faceted high grade Kunzite and I could not be more excited 😹

I hope u guys are ready to buy little sparkly stuff 😹

So I’m justttt getting out of the shows now and have yet to go drop off my 2nd SUV load of the day at the storage unit aaaand then I’m prolly gonna spend my bday at my Airbnb cause I’m exhausted mind, body, soul.

Thank you all for the birthday wishes!!!

Love you to pieces!!!

Corythosaurus

Common name: ‘Duck Billed’ Dinosaur
Size: up to 9 m (30 ft) long
Age: Upper Cretaceous (77 – 75.7 million years ago)
Geographic range: North America
Liked: Chatting
Disliked: Swimming
Taxonomy: Animalia > Chordata > Dinosauria > Ornithischia > Hadrosauridae

Affectionately known as the 'Duck Billed Dinosaur’, this big herbivore was a communicator.

It had a large, bony crest on its head, which amplified its voice, and well-developed ears adapted for hearing low sounds, which allowed to to hear about as well as a modern crocodile (… quite well!). The shape of its scull meant that it would have had a low voice, and differences in the shape of the bony crest on its skull meant that different species of Corythosaur would have had distinctive calls.

Its loud voice and good hearing might have allowed groups of Corythosaurs to warn each other of predators, let each other know about food, plot their escape from Jurassic park, and plan to take over the world… you know, dinosaur things.

We know a remarkable amount about Corythosaurus, because we have a lot of very well preserved fossils. Some even have the remnants of the dinosaur’s last meal in its stomach - conifer needles, seeds, twigs and fruits. Despite all these skeletons, scientists once thought that Corythosaurus was at least partly aquatic, because it appeared to have webbed feet. It turned out that this 'webbing’ was actually 'padding’, and that Corythosaurus is actually more of a long-distance runner than a swimmer.

- OB

Images: https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/冠龍屬
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fichier:Corythosaurus_Hendrickx2.jpg

jurassicjames65

#FossilFriday

Ladies and Gentlemen… I give you a 360 degree look at the world’s most complete Triceratops-Lane. 👏👏👏

A paleontology version of I Will Survive

Crunchy Soil

If you ever go off-trail in the iconic deserts of the American Southwest, you might notice a distinct crunch when you step. It’s a very significant crunch—it’s the sound of a very important soil called cryptobiotic soil or biological soil crust.

Like most soil, cryptobiotic soil has a few components but one of its most important is cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria is a binding agent when it gets wet. Tiny little filaments from the bacteria extend and move around in the soil, locking soil and other particles in place. This is a huge help against soil erosion, since particles that otherwise would be washed away quite easily are now safely stuck in cyanobacteria’s sticky network.

Cyanobacteria are also nitrogen “fixers”. Nitrogen is incredibly important for plant growth, but as it is in the atmosphere, it’s completely useless. Nitrogen must be converted from N2 to NH4+ or NO2. Cyanobacteria in soil crusts do a great job at that and provide needed nitrogen in a land of limited resources.

Cryptobiotic soil is a very fragile resource, so if you ever hear that crunch or notice a black crusty top layer to the soil, it’s time to get back on the trail. It can take up to 7 years for a biological soil crust to regenerate after its been damaged. These soil crusts have suffered a lot at the hands of rogue hikers, mountain bikers, and ATV’s. Loss of soil crust can lead to increasing rates of soil erosion, which is devastating for desert ecosystems.

-CM

Photo credit: Canyonlands National Park http://bit.ly/1LK451i

For more information:
http://bit.ly/1HN3xH4
https://underc.nd.edu/assets/174593/fullsize/pecararo_2010.pdf

Vaporizing metal

This is a piece of trinitite, a glassy, vesicular rock originally formed in New Mexico in 1945 – by the first nuclear weapon test in human history. The heat of the explosion melted some of the material on the ground and fused it into a rock, and a handful of those samples have been collected and sold over the years.

Because this material was put through such an extreme event, a team of scientists led by researchers at UC San Diego and the IPGP in Paris used this material to investigate processes that really can’t be found anywhere else on Earth today. When the solar system formed, objects in space were crashing together at high speeds, releasing huge amounts of energy. Under these conditions, it is possible for some elements to vaporize that we think of as otherwise solid to actually vaporize.

These scientists investigated abundances of the elements zinc, copper, and potassium in trinitite and found that, compared to unmelted material, the zinc was the most volatile – it was literally vaporized from the rock during the explosion. Copper was the next most volatile, and out of those 3 elements potassium was still somewhat volatile, but not as much as the other 2 elements.

Similar losses of these elements have been noted in rocks from the moon, but without calibrations for how much of these elements are lost when the rocks are super-heated scientists couldn’t say for sure whether those elements were lost during the giant impact that formed the moon or they were trapped somewhere else on the moon when it formed. So, researching trinitite in this case was actually a connection to the formation of our moon and the chemistry of the rocks brought back during the Apollo missions.

-JBB

Image credit:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trinitite_from_Trinity_Site.jpg

Original paper:

http://doi.org/10.7185/geochemlet.2014

michelphotography_ch

THE TIME WINDOW VIDEO @michelphotography_ch.

For a few seconds, the weather was a little bit friendlier - time for the

#firstcliffwalk

.

First historic report of death by meteorite located

There have been documented cases of stones falling from the sky for centuries. However, even though one stone fell through the roof and hit a sleeping woman in Alabama, and one piece of a martian meteorite is famously reported as having killed a cat, until today there were no known cases of a meteorite actually killing someone.

This map, with a few details added by modern authors, shows the suspected track of a meteorite that entered the Earth’s atmosphere above what is today Iraq in 1888. The rock entered the atmosphere and as the atmosphere slowed the rock, it heated up and built so much pressure that eventually it triggered an explosion – an airburst. A just-published paper demonstrates that after this event, 3 independent documents were generated stating that fragments of this exploding rock killed one man and paralyzed another. Those documents were delivered to the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire at the time and have been stored in files in Turkey ever since, until these researchers uncovered them.

The researchers suggest that there are likely other cases of people killed by rocks falling from space that have been stored in document vaults around the world, waiting to be recognized today.

-JBB

Image source and original paper:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/maps.13469

whydinosaurs

FOSSIL FRIDAY! Imagine putting this puzzle back together. Here are two beautiful theropod dinosaur fossil skulls: an Albertosaurus and a Carnotoaurus (cast). Both have a “squashed” appearance due to being under geologic pressure for so long. The Carnotaurus skull was probably rotated 90 degrees. These fossils—and many others like them—are currently on display at the

@royaltyrrell

Museum in Drumheller, Canada. 🦖🇨🇦

As part of preparations for Launch, the Perseverance Rover this week was loaded onto this 3-D rotation table, which spins it around such that its center of mass could be measured. To make sure the rover is fully balanced for its space trip, small amounts of additional mass were added to move the center of mass almost exactly where it was supposed to be in the launch and entry/descent/landing planning.

As part of preparations for Launch, the Perseverance Rover this week was loaded onto this 3-D rotation table, which spins it around such that its center of mass could be measured. To make sure the rover is fully balanced for its space trip, small amounts of additional mass were added to move the center of mass almost exactly where it was supposed to be in the launch and entry/descent/landing planning.

A few weeks ago there was a solid earthquake in the remote mountains of Idaho. This video walks through some of the science of how and why there was an earthquake at that spot, and what type of measurements we use to characterize it.

Happy #EarthDay2020 🌎🌍🌏

The image shown is called “Earthrise”.

Taken by Apollo 8 Astronaut William Anders in 1968, it has been dubbed the “most influential environmental photograph ever taken”, as it was one of the first times that people saw, in true colour, just how beautiful our little planet is.

Looking at this image on a screen is humbling enough, but just imagine seeing this with your own eyes. Some lucky people have gotten to experience this, some even multiple times, over the decades. However, regardless of frequency or timing, there is one common realization that is shared among these lucky few: the Earth is precious, life is precious, and we need to mind it.

To demonstrate this, here are some quotes from the men and women who have broken through to the darkness of space and observed our planet from above:

“[The Moon] was a sobering sight, but it didn’t have the impact on me, at least, as the view of the Earth did."— Frank Borman, Astronaut, Apollo 8.

"It truly is an oasis and we don’t take very good care of it. I think the elevation of that awareness is a real contribution to saving the Earth."— Dave Scott, Astronaut, Apollo 9 & 15.

"The view of earth is absolutely spectacular, and the feeling of looking back and seeing your planet as a planet is just an amazing feeling. It’s a totally different perspective, and it makes you appreciate, actually, how fragile our existence is.” —Sally Ride, Astronaut, STS-7 and STS-41-G missions.

“As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man – James B. Irwin, Astronaut, Apollo Program.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."— Neil Armstrong, Astronaut, Apollo 11, Gemini 8.

..and last but certainly not least,

"You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a b**ch.” ― Edgar D. Mitchell, Astronaut, Apollo 14.

While most of us will never experience Earth from space firsthand, we can listen to those who have and marvel at images like Earthrise.

Earthrise reminds us that we are delicate, exceptional creatures living on a delicate and exceptional planet- it is our duty to protect it.

Jean

Image courtesy of NASA

thekevingreene

Last weekend I went to Colorado to celebrate the life of the legendary

@bbloss8 . After a night of shooting with the talented @mikelindle in Denver, we made our way to Colorado Springs the next morning for the services. Afterwards the Nectar Collectors assembled at the Garden of the Gods and we were blessed with #crepuscularrays , epic light and a tasty sunset. Huge shoutout to @pixleprohd @zekesview @permagrinfilms @kapturedm @betco22 and @paddy913 for making it such an amazing experience. #belikebloss #weouthere . Song is “Doin Me” by the incredible @findmikeymike . This was one of Brian’s favorite songs. It is now one of my favorite songs as well. Fuck what they say. Do you. .

Really big cells

This slab of rock is 3.9 centimeters across. Every single critter you see preserved is…remarkably, a single cell. These are a unique type of foraminifera called fusulinids.

Foraminifera are single-celled, ocean-dwelling organisms that make hard shells out of calcium carbonate. Fusulinids developed as a normal-sized type of foram during the Mississippian, around 320 million years ago, but they rapidly expanded. By the time this rock formed in the Pennsylvanian, fusulinids had grown to the point where a single cell could be over a centimeter long. Eventually they reached a point where a single cell could be over 5 centimeters long.

This unit, Kansas’s Lola formation, is one of several units in the United States filled with these spectacular fossils. Fusilinids died out during the end-Permian mass extinction.

-JBB

Image credit: https://flic.kr/p/pppbii

Read more: http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Extension/fossils/fusulinid.html