On 19th of February 1600 the Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina exploded in the most violent eruption in South American recorded history
Huaynaputina #OnThisDay
Revealing Earth’s Oldest Ecosystem On Land, Rhynie, Aberdeenshire.
Known as the Rhynie Chert, the exquisitely detailed plants, spiders, fungi and other life were preserved by hot springs about 410 million years ago.
How Plants Changed The Earth
The evolution of land plants caused a sudden shift in the composition of Earth’s continents.
A new twist to Pleistocene climate cycles
“Precession of the axis of a spinning top and that of the Earth. At present the northern end of Earth’s axis points to what we now call the Pole Star. Around 11.5 ka from now it will point to the star Vega”
Climate and tectonics since 250 Ma
A central feature of the Earth’s climate system is the way that carbon bound in two gases – carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) – controls the amount of incoming solar energy that is retained by the atmosphere.
The end of the Carboniferous ‘icehouse’ world
Sedimentary evidence for global climates 320 Ma ago. As well as the large tracts of glaciogenic sediments, smaller occurrences and examples of polished rock surfaces over which ice had passed show the probable full extent (blue line) of ice sheets across the southern, Gondwana sector of Pangaea (Credit: after Fig 7.3, S104, Earth and Space, ©Open University 2007)
Lower-mantle blobs may reveal relics of event going back to the Hadean
Three-dimensional rendition of seismic tomography results beneath Africa. Mantle with anomalously low S-wave speeds is show in red, orange and yellow. The faint grey overlay represents the extent of surface continental crust today – Horn of Africa at right and Cape Town at the lower margin – the blue areas near the top are oceanic crust on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea. (Image credit: Mingming Li/ASU)
Signs of massive hydrocarbon burning at the end of the Triassic
By Steve Drury First PUBLISHED ON March 25, 2022 One of the ‘Big Five’ mass extinctions occurred at the end of the Triassic Period (~201 Ma), whose magnitude matches that of the more […]
Moving Mountains
“The movements of the underground cause every object to vibrate, which we fortunately cannot feel, but detect with sensitive measuring instruments.” Donat Fäh
Nappe tectonics at the end of the Archaean
“The beginning of modern-style plate tectonics is still debated in the absence of definite evidence. “
