Geology In

Rare Snail Found in Dinosaur-era Amber

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo courtesy of Associate Professor Lida Xing, China University of Geosciences, Beijing.</td></tr>
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Palaeontologists have found - so perfectly preserved that its delicate shell is intact, and prehistoric soft snail tissues have been observed for the first time. A second, less well-preserved snail shell is also in the same chunk of amber.<br />
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An international research team from China, UK, Canada, and Monash University has discovered the first and oldest preserved soft tissue of a terrestrial gastropod – a snail – in the fossil record.<br />
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The discovery is highlighted in a study published in the journal Cretaceous Research.<br />
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“We have demonstrated the exceptional preservation potential of amber (fossilised tree resin) with the discovery for the first time of soft tissues preserved in a snail, approximately 99 million years old, that lived in a hot, tropical environment in an ancient greenhouse Earth setting,” said study co-author Associate Professor Jeffrey Stilwell, a palaeontologist from the Monash School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment.<br />
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“It is absolutely extraordinary for the fossil record to produce such stunning preservation, which is exceedingly rare for any fossil of this age, especially snails and many other animals,” he said.<br />
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The discovery is the first and oldest preserved soft tissue of a snail in the fossil record from the mid-Cretaceous of Myanmar.<br />
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The snail dates from c99 million years ago and is preserved in amber/burmite with its cephalic (head) region and tentacle with eye spot and inferred operculum (the trap-door of the snail).<br />
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The combined evidence from both hard and soft parts indicates that the snails have a cyclophoroidean ancestry with modern relatives of this group living in tropical and subtropical habitats.<br />
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“Our research reveals that it is possible to preserve fossilised remains nearly 100 million years old with the extraordinary preservation of both hard and soft parts, even the most delicate of structures, such as a tentacle with eye spot of a forest-dwelling topical snail,” Associate Professor Stilwell said.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The oldest terrestrial snail recorded from the fossil record with soft tissue preserved, including the head region with tentacle and eye spot and also the inferred operculum.  The cyclophoroidean gastropod dates to approximately 99 million years ago and is stunningly preserved in amber (ancient tree resin) from Myanmar. <br />
Photo courtesy of Associate Professor Lida Xing, China University of Geosciences, Beijing.</td></tr>
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The oldest marine snails are from the Late Cambrian to Ordovician of North America.<br />
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“It is extremely rare for palaeontologists to have any soft parts to confirm an identity of the snail, which is the realm of malacology today,” Associate Professor Stilwell said.<br />
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Many of these terrestrial gastropods had similar morphologies, which made it challenging to assign them to particular groups.<br />
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“We were really fortunate in the burmite specimen to have the tentacle and position of the eye spot and also the inferred operculum,” Associate Professor Stilwell said.<br />
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“The extraordinary aspect of the discovery is to actually see the soft parts of a nearly 100- Million-year-old snail.”<br />
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Associate Professor Stilwell said most snails retracted into their shells when threatened, so the research team was very fortunate to have an example from the fossil record.<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> The above story is based on <a href="https://www.monash.edu/science/news/current/major-fossil-find-sheds-new-light-on-the-life-a-100-million-year-old-snail" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials</a> provided by <a href="https://www.monash.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Monash University.</a></span></i></u></div>
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Rare Snail Found in Dinosaur-era Amber

Photo courtesy of Associate Professor Lida Xing, China University of Geosciences, Beijing. Palaeontologists have found - so perfec...

Mount Etna's Slide Into the Sea Could Trigger a Catastrophic Collapse

Tectonic, volcano 6:06 PM

Mount Etna's Slide Into the Sea Could Trigger a Catastrophic Collapse

Photograph by Am Design Gravity is pulling Mount Etna toward the sea, raising the possibility that the flank of the active volca...

4-Billion-Year-Old Crystals Offer Clues to the Origins of Life

Crystal, Earth History 7:20 PM

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What did earth look like more than 4 billion years ago? This was before humans carved its wonders on stone, before trees etched the seasons in their rings, before plate tectonics buckled Earth’s surface to expose the ancient layers in growing mountain belts.<br />
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But scientists do have some clues in the form of an extremely tough mineral known as zircon.<br />
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Zircon crystals are almost indestructible; some still around today are nearly 4.4 billion years old. They're like tiny time capsules that retain the chemical fingerprints of this extremely early time. “This is basically our only window into the formative stages of our planet,” says Dustin Trail of the University of Rochester.<br />
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By decoding these chemical clues, scientists are slowly teasing out the environments that fostered the earliest glimmers of life. But exactly what the surface looked like at that time has long remained a mystery. Now, in a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trail and his colleagues pick apart the enigma.<br />
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Using the chemical fingerprints of zircons, the team identified an array of sediments likely present on early Earth, where the oldest biochemical reactions could have brewed.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The Ultimate Recycler</span></h4>
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When Earth first formed, more than 4.5 billion years ago, its surface likely looked nothing like it does today. Scientists often paint this period—aptly named the Hadean after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld—as a fiery hellscape under constant meteoric assault, replete with volcanoes gurgling lava at the surface.<br />
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But all of this is based on inference—no physical evidence remains from Earth's first few hundred million years. “The Earth has done a great job erasing some of that information,” Trail says. Our planet is the ultimate recycler. Plate tectonics constantly repurpose old rock into new, and lava flows harden into fresh landscapes.<br />
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Zircon crystals, however, are so tough that they often survive the intense temperatures and pressures of this recycling process, retaining clues about the environments in which they originally formed. Using zircon oxygen isotopes, researchers previously discovered that liquid water covered parts of our planet some 4.3 billion years ago, suggesting the surface cooled just a few hundred million years after our planet’s formation. And just last year, researchers found what they believe might be hints of early life in the form of carbon-rich inclusions in 4.1-billion-year-old zircons.<br />
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But aside from these glimpses, the scenery on Earth’s surface during this time—including the environments that might have fostered these earliest sparks of life—largely remain a mystery.<br />
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“If we can begin to constrain the types of materials that are around at that time,” Trail says, “that perhaps pushes us one step closer to understanding how biochemical reactions, or prebiotic reactions, may have utilized the crust at that time as a substrate.”</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Chemical Traces</span></h4>
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For answers, Trail and his colleagues turned to silicon and oxygen. Together, these elements make up roughly 75 percent of the rocks on Earth today, he explains. And both have a useful feature: they have more than one type, or isotope.<br />
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The formation, and transformation, of rocks changes their isotopic fingerprint. For example, rocks that form from cooling lava have vastly different signatures than clays that come from weathered rocks. And zircons—themselves starting off as different rock and sediment types before being buried deep in the Earth, melting, and then crystallizing—still hold the signature of those early sediments.<br />
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To conduct the delicate analysis of silicon and oxygen contained in the zircons, the team turned to the high-resolution ion microprobe at the University of California, Los Angeles, which shoots a fine beam of charged atoms at the tiny samples and measures the ejected ions that bounce back.<br />
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For the test, they collected zircons just older than 4 billion years—each about 100 microns across or roughly the width of a human hair—from the Jack Hills region of Western Australia. They compared the chemistry of these ancient minerals to that of younger zircons with more definitive origins as a “bridge” to help interpret the different ratios of isotopes, Trail explains.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Picture of Early Earth</span></h4>
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More than half of the ancient zircons tested reveal early interactions between water and rock, in a range of different environments.<br />
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Some zircons contain the chemical signatures of rocks weathered by water to form clay. Other zircons bear the signatures of dissolved minerals that crystallize to form rocks like chert or banded iron formations in lakes or oceans. Still others have the signature of a process known as serpentinization, so called for its snake-skin-like texture and color. During this process, water reacts with rocks enriched in iron and magnesium, incorporating itself into the mineral structures.<br />
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 Most importantly, each of these processes creates a new environmental niche that could foster early biochemical reactions, the glimmers of early life.<br />
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“That's a pretty cool result,” says Elizabeth Bell, a geochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the work. Many of these processes are largely indistinguishable from oxygen isotopes alone, she notes, calling the use of silicon "really significant.”<br />
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Bell led the 2017 work that identified hints of a biosphere in 4.1-billion-year-old zircons. These latest results bolster her findings and other interpretations of early Earth. “It sort of all comes together in a nice picture,” she says.<br />
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Everything around (and within) us once came from stardust, and the early processes that formed every molecule, mineral, and complex organism of today—from your cell phone to the food you eat to the heart pumping in your chest. And scientists are just beginning to tease out their origins.<br />
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“We're at a really interesting point,” Trail says. “We're beginning to really piece together what our planet was like more than 4 billion years ago. And that's pretty exciting.”</div>
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above post is reprinted from <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/09/news-earth-rocks-sediment-first-life-zircon/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">National Geographic.</a></span></i></u></div>
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The study published in <a href="http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1808335115" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.</a></span></i></u> </div>
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4-Billion-Year-Old Crystals Offer Clues to the Origins of Life

What did earth look like more than 4 billion years ago? This was before humans carved its wonders on stone, before trees etched the se...

What Are Rare Earths, Crucial Elements in Modern Technology?

Geology, Mining, Researches 6:01 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A handful of europium.</td></tr>
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Most Americans use rare earth elements every day – without knowing it, or knowing anything about what they do.<br />
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Stanley Mertzman, a geologist whose specialty is X-ray analysis of rocks and minerals to determine their chemical composition, and who teaches mineralogy at Franklin and Marshall College, explains more about these little-known and fascinating elements – and the modern electronics they make possible.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">1. What are rare earth elements?</span></h3>
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Strictly speaking, they are elements like others on the periodic table – such as carbon, hydrogen and oxygen – with atomic numbers 57 to 71. There are two others with similar properties that are sometimes grouped with them, but the main rare earth elements are those 15. To make the first one, lanthanum, start with a barium atom and add one proton and one electron. Each successive rare earth element adds one more proton and one more electron.<br />
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It’s significant that there are 15 rare earth elements: Chemistry students may recall that when electrons are added to an atom, they collect in groups or layers, called orbitals, which are like concentric circles of a target around the bull’s-eye of the nucleus.<br />
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The innermost target circle of any atom can contain two electrons; adding a third electron means adding one in the second target circle. That’s where the next seven electrons go, too – after which electrons must go to the third target circle, which can hold 18. The next 18 electrons go into the fourth target circle.<br />
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Then things start to get a bit odd. Though there is still room for electrons in the fourth target circle, the next eight electrons go into the fifth target circle. And despite more room in the fifth, the next two electrons after that go into the sixth target circle.<br />
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That’s when the atom becomes barium, atomic number 56, and those empty spaces in earlier target circles start to fill. Adding one more electron – to make lanthanum, the first in the series of rare earth elements – puts that electron in the fifth circle. Adding another, to make cerium, atomic number 58, adds an electron to the fourth circle. Making the next element, praseodymium, actually moves the newest electron in the fifth circle to the fourth, and adds one more. From there, additional electrons fill up the fourth circle.<br />
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In all elements, the electrons in the outermost circle largely influence the element’s chemical properties. Because the rare earths have identical outermost electron configurations, their properties are quite similar.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">2. Are rare earth elements really rare?</span></h3>
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No. They’re much more abundant in the Earth’s crust than many other valuable elements. Even the rarest rare earth, thulium, with atomic number 69, is 125 times more common than gold. And the least-rare rare earth, cerium, with atomic number 58, is 15,000 times more abundant than gold.</div>
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They are rare in one sense, though – mineralogists would call them “dispersed,” meaning they’re mostly sprinkled across the planet in relatively low concentrations. Rare earths are often found in rare igneous rocks called carbonatites – nothing so common as basalt from Hawaii or Iceland, or andesite from Mount St. Helens or Guatemala’s Volcano Fuego.<br />
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There are a few regions that are have lots of rare earths – and they’re mostly in China, which produces more than 80 percent of the global annual total of 130,000 metric tons. Australia has a few areas too, as do some other countries. The U.S. has a little bit of area with lots of rare earths, but the last American source for them, California’s Mountain Pass Quarry, closed in 2015.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">3. If they’re not rare, are they very expensive?</span></h3>
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Yes, quite. In 2018, the cost for an oxide of neodymium, atomic number 60, is US$107,000 per metric ton. The price is expected to climb to $150,000 by 2025.<br />
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Europium is even more costly – about $712,000 per metric ton.<br />
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Part of the reason is that rare earth elements can be chemically difficult to separate from each other to get a pure substance.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">4. What are rare earth elements useful for?</span></h3>
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In the last half of the 20th century, europium, with atomic number 63, came in to wide demand for its role as a color-producing phosphor in video screens, including computer monitors and plasma <br />
TVs. It’s also useful for absorbing neutrons in nuclear reactors’ control rods.<br />
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Other rare earths are also commonly used in electronic devices today. Neodymium, atomic number 60, for instance, is a powerful magnet, useful in smartphones, televisions, lasers, rechargeable batteries and hard drives. An upcoming version of Tesla’s electric car motor is also expected to use neodymium.<br />
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Demand for rare earths has risen steadily since the middle of the 20th century, and there are no real alternative materials to replace them. As important as rare earths are to a modern technology-based society, and as difficult as they are to mine and use, the tariff battle may put the U.S. in a very bad place, turning both the country and rare earth elements themselves into pawns in this game of economic chess.</div>
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<i><u><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above post is reprinted from  <a href="http://theconversation.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="http://theconversation.com/what-are-rare-earths-crucial-elements-in-modern-technology-4-questions-answered-101364" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">original article</a>.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101364/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" /> </span></u></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #717171; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 11.648px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br />
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What Are Rare Earths, Crucial Elements in Modern Technology?

A handful of europium. Most Americans use rare earth elements every day – without knowing it, or knowing anything about what they d...

A Geyser Erupted in Yellowstone and 80 Years of Human Trash Poured Out

Environment, Yellowstone 8:12 PM

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On Sept. 15, Yellowstone National Park's Ear Spring geyser erupted in its most violent display since 1957. For several minutes, sprays of steaming water leapt up to 30 feet (9 meters) in the air, chunks of rock and dirt spewed forth onto the ground and about 60 years of wishes were promptly reversed when the geyser gave up nearly 100 coins that had previously been tossed in.<br />
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Some coins were to be expected: Who among us hasn't flipped a good-luck penny into a thermal vent? But park officials were more surprised to find that decades of man-made garbage had also burst forth from Ear Spring — some of which dated back to the 1930s.<br />
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"After Ear Spring erupted on September 15, employees found a strange assortment of items strewn across the landscape around its vent," officials wrote on the Yellowstone National Park Facebook page. "Some are clearly historic: they'll be inventoried by curators and may end up in Yellowstone's archives."<br />
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What have people been throwing into the geyser? Some of the historical detritus that Ear Spring coughed up includes a large chunk of cinderblock, a broken bottle, several metal warning signs, some old aluminum cans, plastic cups, cigarette butts, someone's rubber heel insert, a vintage pacifier from the 1930s and an 8-inch-long (20 centimeters) plastic drinking straw. (Editor's note: please do not try to drink a geyser.)<br />
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Whether these foreign objects were dropped into the geyser accidentally or chucked in on purpose makes no difference. Either way, park officials wrote, it's bad for the geyser.<br />
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</div>"Foreign objects can damage hot springs and geysers," park officials wrote on Facebook. "The next time Ear Spring erupts we hope it's nothing but natural rocks and water."<br />
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According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Ear Spring has erupted four times in the last 60 years, most recently in 2004. The geyser is located on Yellowstone's Geyser Hill, not far from the world-famous gusher Old Faithful. Several other geysers and thermal pools showed increased activity around the time of Ear Spring's eruption: For instance, a brand-new vent popped up and erupted overnight between Sept. 18 and 19.<br />
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"An approximately 8-foot [2.4 m] diameter area of surrounding ground is 'breathing' – rising and falling by about six inches [15 cm] every 10 minutes," USGS experts wrote in a news release.<br />
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This increased hydrothermal activity could last anywhere from a few days to several years, the USGS wrote. It could also result in a "small hydrothermal explosion" that would carve out a shallow crater on Geyser Hill while spewing jets of boiling water and rocks hundreds of feet in the air.<br />
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This is all to say, if you have been meaning to dispose of your old cinder block or vintage baby gear collection in a Yellowstone geyser, now is not the time.</div>

A Geyser Erupted in Yellowstone and 80 Years of Human Trash Poured Out

On Sept. 15, Yellowstone National Park's Ear Spring geyser erupted in its most violent display since 1957. For several minutes, sprays...

A Wrench in Earth's Engine: Stagnant Slabs

Earth History, Tectonic 7:01 PM

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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Something’s broken inside Earth? Scientists explore why millennia-old process has stalled</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Scientists have diagnosed the Earth with a bizarre geological condition known as ‘stagnant slabs’, meaning tectonic rocks subducted into the fiery hot mantle mysteriously become wedged hundreds of miles below the surface.</span><br />
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In a study published today in Nature Geoscience, the team explored the physics of "stagnant slabs." These geophysical oddities form when huge chunks of Earth's oceanic plates are forced deep underground at the edges of certain continental plates. The chunks sink down into the planet's interior for hundreds of miles until they suddenly -- and for reasons scientists can't explain -- stop like a stalled car.<br />
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CU Boulder's Wei Mao and Shijie Zhong, however, may have found the reason for that halt. Using computer simulations, the researchers examined a series of stagnant slabs in the Pacific Ocean near Japan and the Philippines. They discovered that these cold rocks seem to be sliding on a thin layer of weak material lying at the boundary of the planet's upper and lower mantle -- roughly 660 kilometers, or 410 miles, below the surface.<br />
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And the stoppage is likely temporary: "Although we see these slabs stagnate, they are a fairly recent phenomena, probably happening in the last 20 million years," said Zhong, a co-author of the new study and a professor in CU Boulder's Department of Physics.<br />
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The findings matter for tectonics and volcanism on the Earth's surface. Zhong explained that the planet's mantle, which lies above the core, generates vast amounts of heat. To cool the globe down, hotter rocks rise up through the mantle and colder rocks sink.<br />
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"You can think of this mantle convection as a big engine that drives all of what we see on Earth's surface: earthquakes, mountain building, plate tectonics, volcanos and even Earth's magnetic field," Zhong said.<br />
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The existence of stagnant slabs, which geophysicists first located about a decade ago, however, complicates that metaphor, suggesting that Earth's engine may grind to a halt in some areas. That, in turn, may change how scientists think diverse features, such as East Asia's roiling volcanos, form over geologic time.<br />
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Scientists have mostly located such slabs in the western Pacific Ocean, specifically off the east coast of Japan and deep below the Mariana Trench. They occur at the sites of subduction zones, or areas where oceanic plates at the surface of the planet plunge hundreds of miles below ground.<br />
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Slabs seen at similar sites near North and South America behave in ways that geophysicists might expect: They dive through Earth's upper mantle and into the lower mantle where they heat up near the core.<br />
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But around Asia, "they simply don't go down," Zhong said. Instead, the slabs spread out horizontally near the boundary between the upper and lower mantle, a point at which heat and pressure inside Earth cause minerals to change from one phase to another.<br />
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To find out why slabs go stagnant, Zhong and Mao, a graduate student in physics, developed realistic simulations of how energy and rock cycle around the entire planet.<br />
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They found that the only way they could explain the behavior of the stagnant slabs was if a thin layer of less-viscous rock was wedged in between the two halves of the mantle. While no one has directly observed such a layer, researchers have predicted that it exists by studying the effects of heat and pressure on rock.<br />
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If it does, such a layer would act like a greasy puddle in the middle of the planet. "If you introduce a weak layer at that depth, somehow the reduced viscosity helps lubricate the region," Zhong said. "The slabs get deflected and can keep going for a long distance horizontally."<br />
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Stagnant slabs seem to occur off the coast of Asia, but not the Americas, because the movement of the continents above gives those chunks of rock more room to slide. Zhong, however, said that he doesn't think the slabs will stay stuck. With enough time, he suspects that they will break through the slick part of the mantle and continue their plunge toward the planet's core.<br />
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The planet, in other words, would still behave like an engine -- just with a few sticky spots. "New research suggests that the story may be more complicated than we previously thought," Zhong said.<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/today/2018/10/01/wrench-earths-engine" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.colorado.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of Colorado at Boulder</a>. Original written by Daniel Strain.</span></i></u></div>

A Wrench in Earth's Engine: Stagnant Slabs

Something’s broken inside Earth? Scientists explore why millennia-old process has stalled Scientists have diagnosed the Earth with a b...

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Zirconia: The World’s Hottest Rock

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zirconia Zirconia is a mineral with a crystal structure made from the elements zirconium (Zr) and oxygen (O), with the chemical formu...

Scientists Have Been Drilling Into the Ocean Floor for 50 Years – Here's What They've Found So Far

ocean, Researches 7:21 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ocean Floor photo: By David Shukman</td></tr>
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It's stunning but true that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the Earth's ocean floor. Much of what we do know has come from scientific ocean drilling – the systematic collection of core samples from the deep seabed. This revolutionary process began 50 years ago, when the drilling vessel Glomar Challenger sailed into the Gulf of Mexico on August 11, 1968 on the first expedition of the federally funded Deep Sea Drilling Project.<br />
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I went on my first scientific ocean drilling expedition in 1980, and since then have participated in six more expeditions to locations including the far North Atlantic and Antaractica's Weddell Sea. In my lab, my students and I work with core samples from these expeditions.<br />
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Each of these cores, which are cylinders 31 feet long and 3 inches wide, is like a book whose information is waiting to be translated into words. Holding a newly opened core, filled with rocks and sediment from the Earth's ocean floor, is like opening a rare treasure chest that records the passage of time in Earth's history.<br />
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Over a half-century, scientific ocean drilling has proved the theory of plate tectonics, created the field of paleoceanography and redefined how we view life on Earth by revealing an enormous variety and volume of life in the deep marine biosphere. And much more remains to be learned.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Technological innovations</span></h4>
Two key innovations made it possible for research ships to take core samples from precise locations in the deep oceans. The first, known as dynamic positioning, enables a 471-foot ship to stay fixed in place while drilling and recovering cores, one on top of the next, often in over 12,000 feet of water.<br />
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Anchoring isn't feasible at these depths. Instead, technicians drop a torpedo-shaped instrument called a transponder over the side. A device called a transducer, mounted on the ship's hull, sends an acoustic signal to the transponder, which replies. Computers on board calculate the distance and angle of this communication. Thrusters on the ship's hull maneuver the vessel to stay in exactly the same location, countering the forces of currents, wind and waves.<br />
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Another challenge arises when drill bits have to be replaced mid-operation. The ocean's crust is composed of igneous rock that wears bits down long before the desired depth is reached.<br />
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When this happens, the drill crew brings the entire drill pipe to the surface, mounts a new drill bit and returns to the same hole. This requires guiding the pipe into a funnel shaped re-entry cone, less than 15 feet wide, placed in the bottom of the ocean at the mouth of the drilling hole. The process, which was first accomplished in 1970, is like lowering a long strand of spaghetti into a quarter-inch-wide funnel at the deep end of an Olympic swimming pool.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Confirming plate tectonics</span></h4>
When scientific ocean drilling began in 1968, the theory of plate tectonics was a subject of active debate. One key idea was that new ocean crust was created at ridges in the seafloor, where oceanic plates moved away from each other and magma from earth's interior welled up between them. According to this theory, crust should be new material at the crest of ocean ridges, and its age should increase with distance from the crest.<br />
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The only way to prove this was by analyzing sediment and rock cores. In the winter of 1968-1969, the Glomar Challenger drilled seven sites in the South Atlantic Ocean to the east and west of the Mid-Atlantic ridge. Both the igneous rocks of the ocean floor and overlying sediments aged in perfect agreement with the predictions, confirming that ocean crust was forming at the ridges and plate tectonics was correct.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Reconstructing earth's history</span></h4>
The ocean record of Earth's history is more continuous than geologic formations on land, where erosion and redeposition by wind, water and ice can disrupt the record. In most ocean locations sediment is laid down particle by particle, microfossil by microfossil, and remains in place, eventually succumbing to pressure and turning into rock.<br />
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Microfossils (plankton) preserved in sediment are beautiful and informative, even though some are smaller than the width of a human hair. Like larger plant and animal fossils, scientists can use these delicate structures of calcium and silicon to reconstruct past environments.<br />
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Thanks to scientific ocean drilling, we know that after an asteroid strike killed all non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago, new life colonized the crater rim within years, and within 30,000 years a full ecosystem was thriving. A few deep ocean organisms lived right through the meteorite impact.<br />
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Ocean drilling has also shown that ten million years later, a massive discharge of carbon – probably from extensive volcanic activity and methane released from melting methane hydrates – caused an abrupt, intense warming event, or hyperthermal, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. During this episode, even the Arctic reached over 73 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
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The resulting acidification of the ocean from the release of carbon into the atmosphere and ocean caused massive dissolution and change in the deep ocean ecosystem.<br />
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This episode is an impressive example of the impact of rapid climate warming. The total amount of carbon released during the PETM is estimated to be about equal to the amount that humans will release if we burn all of Earth's fossil fuel reserves. Yet, an important difference is that the carbon released by the volcanoes and hydrates was at a much slower rate than we are currently releasing fossil fuel. Thus we can expect even more dramatic climate and ecosystem changes unless we stop emitting carbon.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Finding life in ocean sediments</span></h4>
Scientific ocean drilling has also shown that there are roughly as many cells in marine sediment as in the ocean or in soil. Expeditions have found life in sediments at depths over 8000 feet; in seabed deposits that are 86 million years old; and at temperatures above 140 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
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Today scientists from 23 nations are proposing and conducting research through the International Ocean Discovery Program, which uses scientific ocean drilling to recover data from seafloor sediments and rocks and to monitor environments under the ocean floor. Coring is producing new information about plate tectonics, such as the complexities of ocean crust formation, and the diversity of life in the deep oceans.<br />
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This research is expensive, and technologically and intellectually intense. But only by exploring the deep sea can we recover the treasures it holds and better understand its beauty and complexity.<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above post is reprinted from <a href="https://theconversation.com/scientists-have-been-drilling-into-the-ocean-floor-for-50-years-heres-what-theyve-found-so-far-100309" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license.</span></i></u></div>

Scientists Have Been Drilling Into the Ocean Floor for 50 Years – Here's What They've Found So Far

Ocean Floor photo: By David Shukman It's stunning but true that we know more about the surface of the moon than about the Earth...