Geology In

Scientists Discover Giant Impact Crater Under Greenland Ice

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hv1cVLrX-rI/W-7edbQ7rMI/AAAAAAAAQlA/OKjpu9ANvYkQzUDKeS8_p0j_ifGQblJ1gCLcBGAs/s1600/Massive%2Bimpact%2Bcrater%2Bfrom%2Ba%2Bkilometer-wide%2Biron%2Bmeteorite%2Bdiscovered%2Bin%2BGreenland%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Map of the bedrock topography beneath the ice sheet and the ice-free land surrounding the Hiawatha impact crater. " border="0" data-original-height="842" data-original-width="1289" height="418" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hv1cVLrX-rI/W-7edbQ7rMI/AAAAAAAAQlA/OKjpu9ANvYkQzUDKeS8_p0j_ifGQblJ1gCLcBGAs/s640/Massive%2Bimpact%2Bcrater%2Bfrom%2Ba%2Bkilometer-wide%2Biron%2Bmeteorite%2Bdiscovered%2Bin%2BGreenland%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Map of the bedrock topography beneath the ice sheet and the ice-free land surrounding the Hiawatha impact crater. Credit: The Natural History Museum of Denmark</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An international team lead by researchers from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen have discovered a 31-km wide meteorite impact crater buried beneath the ice-sheet in the northern Greenland. </span></div>
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This is the first time that a crater of any size has been found under one of Earth's continental ice sheets. The researchers worked for last three years to verify their discovery, initially made in the 2015. The research is described in a new study just published in the internationally recognized journal Science Advances.<br />
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The crater measures more than 31 km in diameter, corresponding to an area bigger than Paris, and placing it among the 25 largest impact craters on Earth. The crater formed when a kilometre-wide iron meteorite smashed into northern Greenland, but has since been hidden under nearly a kilometre of ice.<br />
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"The crater is exceptionally well-preserved, and that is surprising, because glacier ice is an incredibly efficient erosive agent that would have quickly removed traces of the impact. But that means the crater must be rather young from a geological perspective. So far, it has not been possible to date the crater directly, but its condition strongly suggests that it formed after ice began to cover Greenland, so younger than 3 million years old and possibly as recently as 12,000 years ago -- toward the end of the last ice age" says Professor Kurt H. Kjær from the Center for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Giant circular depression</span></h4>
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The crater was first discovered in July 2015 as the researchers inspected a new map of the topography beneath Greenland's ice-sheet. They noticed an enormous, but previously undetected circular depression under Hiawatha Glacier, sitting at the very edge of the ice sheet in northern Greenland.<br />
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"We immediately knew this was something special but at the same time it became clear that it would be difficult to confirm the origin of the depression," says Professor Kjær.<br />
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In the courtyard at the Geological Museum in Copenhagen just outside the windows of the Center for GeoGenetics sits a 20-tonne iron meteorite found in North Greenland not far from the Hiawatha Glacier.<br />
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"It was therefore not such a leap to infer that the depression could be a previously undescribed meterorite crater, but initially we lacked the evidence," reflects Associate Professor Nicolaj K. Larsen from Aarhus University.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The crucial evidence</span></h4>
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Their suspicion that the giant depression was a meteorite crater was reinforced when the team sent a German research plane from the Alfred Wegener Institute to fly over the Hiawatha Glacier and map the crater and the overlying ice with a new powerful ice radar. Joseph MacGregor, a glaciologist at NASA, who participated in the study and is an expert in ice radar measurements adds:<br />
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"Previous radar measurements of Hiawatha Glacier were part of a long-term NASA effort to map Greenland's changing ice cover. What we really needed to test our hypothesis was a dense and focused radar survey there. Our colleagues at the Alfred Wegener Institute and University of Kansas did exactly that with a next-generation radar system that exceeded all expectations and imaged the depression in stunning detail. A distinctly circular rim, central uplift, disturbed and undisturbed ice layering, and basal debris. It's all there."<br />
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In the summers of 2016 and 2017, the research team returned to the site to map tectonic structures in the rock near the foot of the glacier and collect samples of sediments washed out from the depression through a meltwater channel.<br />
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"Some of the quartz sand washed from the crater had planar deformation features indicative of a violent impact, and this is conclusive evidence that the depression beneath the Hiawatha Glacier is a meteorite crater, " says Professor Larsen.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The consequences of the impact on the Earth's climate and life</span></h4>
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Earlier studies have shown that large impacts can profoundly affect Earth's climate, with major consequences for life on Earth at the time. It is therefore very resonable to ask when and how and this meteorite impact at the Hiawatha Glacier affected the planet.<br />
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"The next step in the investigation will be to confidently date the impact. This will be a challenge, because it will probably require recovering material that melted during the impact from the bottom of the structure, but this is crucial if we are to understand how the Hiawatha impact affected life on Earth," concludes Professor Kjær.</div>
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://snm.ku.dk/english/news/all_news/2018/2018.11/massive-impact-crater-from-a-kilometre-wide-iron-meteorite-discovered-in-greenland/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.science.ku.dk/english/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Faculty of Science - University of Copenhagen</a>.</span></i></u></div>
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Scientists Discover Giant Impact Crater Under Greenland Ice

Map of the bedrock topography beneath the ice sheet and the ice-free land surrounding the Hiawatha impact crater. Credit: The Natural His...

Chlorastrolite: Michigan's Striking State Gemstone

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Discovery of High Geothermal Heat at South Pole

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Discovery of High Geothermal Heat at South Pole

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Scientists to Track the Reaction of Crystals to the Electric Field

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Dinosaur Eggs Came in Many Colors—just Like Birds’

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Dinosaur Eggs Came in Many Colors—just Like Birds’

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Geoscientists Discover an Overlooked Source for Earth's Water

Geology, NASA, water 7:41 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This view of Earth's horizon was taken by an Expedition 7 crew member onboard the International Space Station, using a wide-angle lens while the Station was over the Pacific Ocean.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Earth's water may have originated from both asteroidal material and gas left over from the formation of the Sun, according to new research. The new finding could give scientists important insights about the development of other planets and their potential to support life.</span><br />
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In a new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, researchers propose a new theory to address the long-standing mystery of where Earth's water came from and how it got here.<br />
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The new study challenges widely-accepted ideas about hydrogen in Earth's water by suggesting the element partially came from clouds of dust and gas remaining after the Sun's formation, called the solar nebula.<br />
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To identify sources of water on Earth, scientists have searched for sources of hydrogen rather than oxygen, because the latter component of water is much more abundant in the solar system.<br />
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Many scientists have historically supported a theory that all of Earth's water came from asteroids because of similarities between ocean water and water found on asteroids. The ratio of deuterium, a heavier hydrogen isotope, to normal hydrogen serves as a unique chemical signature of water sources. In the case of Earth's oceans, the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio is close to what is found in asteroids.<br />
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But the ocean may not be telling the entire story of Earth's hydrogen, according to the study's authors.<br />
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"It's a bit of a blind spot in the community," said Steven Desch, a professor of astrophysics in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona and co-author of the new study, led by Peter Buseck, Regents' Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University. "When people measure the [deuterium-to-hydrogen] ratio in ocean water and they see that it is pretty close to what we see in asteroids, it was always easy to believe it all came from asteroids."<br />
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More recent research suggests hydrogen in Earth's oceans does not represent hydrogen throughout the entire planet, the study's authors said. Samples of hydrogen from deep inside the Earth, close to the boundary between the core and mantle, have notably less deuterium, indicating this hydrogen may not have come from asteroids. Noble gases helium and neon, with isotopic signatures inherited from the solar nebula, have also been found in the Earth's mantle.<br />
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In the new study, researchers developed a new theoretical model of Earth's formation to explain these differences between hydrogen in Earth's oceans and at the core-mantle boundary as well as the presence of noble gases deep inside the planet.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Modeling Earth's beginning</span></h4>
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According to their new model, several billion years ago, large waterlogged asteroids began developing into planets while the solar nebula still swirled around the Sun. These asteroids, known as planetary embryos, collided and grew rapidly. Eventually, a collision introduced enough energy to melt the surface of the largest embryo into an ocean of magma. This largest embryo would eventually become Earth.<br />
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Gases from the solar nebula, including hydrogen and noble gases, were drawn in by the large, magma-covered embryo to form an early atmosphere. Nebular hydrogen, which contains less deuterium and is lighter than asteroidal hydrogen, dissolved into the molten iron of the magma ocean.<br />
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Through a process called isotopic fractionation, hydrogen was pulled towards the young Earth's center. Hydrogen, which is attracted to iron, was delivered to the core by the metal, while much of the heavier isotope, deuterium, remained in the magma which eventually cooled and became the mantle, according to the study's authors. Impacts from smaller embryos and other objects then continued to add water and overall mass until Earth reached its final size.<br />
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This new model would leave Earth with noble gases deep inside its mantle and a lower deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio in its core than in its mantle and oceans.<br />
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The authors used the model to estimate how much hydrogen came from each source. They concluded most was asteroidal in origin, but some of Earth's water did come from the solar nebula.<br />
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"For every 100 molecules of Earth's water, there are one or two coming from solar nebula," said Jun Wu, assistant research professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and lead author of the study.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">An insightful model</span></h4>
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The study also offers scientists new perspectives about the development of other planets and their potential to support life, the authors said. Earth-like planets in other solar systems may not all have access to asteroids loaded with water. The new study suggests these exoplanets could have obtained water through their system's own solar nebula.<br />
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"This model suggests that the inevitable formation of water would likely occur on any sufficiently large rocky exoplanets in extrasolar systems," Wu said. "I think this is very exciting."<br />
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Anat Shahar, a geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, who was not involved with the study, noted the hydrogen fractionation factor, which describes how the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio changes when the element dissolves in iron, is currently unknown and difficult to measure. For the new study, this property of hydrogen had to be estimated.<br />
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The new model, which fits in well with current research, could be tested once experiments reveal the hydrogen fractionation factor, Shahar said.<br />
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"This paper is a very creative alternative to what is an old problem," Shahar said. "The authors have done a good job of estimating what these different fractionation factors would be without having the experiments."</div>
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://news.agu.org/press-release/scientists-theorize-new-origin-story-for-earths-water/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.agu.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Geophysical Union</a>.</span></i></u></div>

Geoscientists Discover an Overlooked Source for Earth's Water

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The Lithosphere: Revolutionising Earth Tectonics

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The Lithosphere: Revolutionising Earth Tectonics

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New 12-Ton Jurassic dinosaur Was the Largest to Walk the Earth

dinosaur, Fossils 7:56 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jurassic dinosaur fossils seen at the Dinosaur National Monument. The newly-discovered dinosaur is believed to be from the Jurassic period, approximately 200 million years ago. (MIKE LYVERS/GETTY IMAGES)<br /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The newly discovered species was massive but walked with a cat-like crouch.</span></h4>
A new species of a giant dinosaur has been found in South Africa's Free State Province. The plant-eating dinosaur, named Ledumahadi mafube, weighed 12 tonnes and stood about four metres high at the hips. Ledumahadi mafube was the largest land animal alive on Earth when it lived, nearly 200 million years ago. It was roughly double the size of a large African elephant.<br />
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A team of international scientists, led by University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) palaeontologist Professor Jonah Choiniere, described the new species in the journal Current Biology.<br />
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The dinosaur's name is Sesotho for "a giant thunderclap at dawn" (Sesotho is one of South Africa's 11 official languages and an indigenous language in the area where the dinosaur was found).<br />
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"The name reflects the great size of the animal as well as the fact that its lineage appeared at the origins of sauropod dinosaurs," said Choiniere. "It honours both the recent and ancient heritage of southern Africa."<br />
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Ledumahadi mafube is one of the closest relatives of sauropod dinosaurs. Sauropods, weighing up to 60 tonnes, include well-known species like Brontosaurus. All sauropods ate plants and stood on four legs, with a posture like modern elephants. Ledumahadi evolved its giant size independently from sauropods, and although it stood on four legs, its forelimbs would have been more crouched. This caused the scientific team to consider Ledumahadi an evolutionary "experiment" with giant body size.<br />
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Ledumahadi's fossil tells a fascinating story not only of its individual life history, but also the geographic history of where it lived, and of the evolutionary history of sauropod dinosaurs.<br />
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"The first thing that struck me about this animal is the incredible robustness of the limb bones," says lead author, Dr Blair McPhee. "It was of similar size to the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs, but whereas the arms and legs of those animals are typically quite slender, Ledumahadi's are incredibly thick. To me this indicated that the path towards gigantism in sauropodomorphs was far from straightforward, and that the way that these animals solved the usual problems of life, such as eating and moving, was much more dynamic within the group than previously thought."<br />
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The research team developed a new method, using measurements from the "arms" and "legs" to show that Ledumahadi walked on all fours, like the later sauropod dinosaurs, but unlike many other members of its own group alive at its time such as Massospondylus. The team also showed that many earlier relatives of sauropods stood on all fours, that this body posture evolved more than once, and that it appeared earlier than scientists previously thought.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DzZLOGdCbQ0/W-B18Z0Jm1I/AAAAAAAAQi4/sML_ugosKEgUJWoEOYIU5su7su_TOT7pgCLcBGAs/s1600/Jurassic%2Bdinosaur%2Bfossils%2Bseen%2Bat%2Bthe%2BDinosaur%2BNational%2BMonument.%2BThe%2Bnewly-discovered%2Bdinosaur%2Bis%2Bbelieved%2Bto%2Bbe%2Bfrom%2Bthe%2BJurassic%2Bperiod%252C%2Bapproximately%2B200%2Bmillion%2Byears%2Bago.%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Ledumahadi mafube is the first of the giant sauropodomorphs of the Jurassic." border="0" data-original-height="878" data-original-width="878" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DzZLOGdCbQ0/W-B18Z0Jm1I/AAAAAAAAQi4/sML_ugosKEgUJWoEOYIU5su7su_TOT7pgCLcBGAs/s400/Jurassic%2Bdinosaur%2Bfossils%2Bseen%2Bat%2Bthe%2BDinosaur%2BNational%2BMonument.%2BThe%2Bnewly-discovered%2Bdinosaur%2Bis%2Bbelieved%2Bto%2Bbe%2Bfrom%2Bthe%2BJurassic%2Bperiod%252C%2Bapproximately%2B200%2Bmillion%2Byears%2Bago.%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ledumahadi mafube is the first of the giant sauropodomorphs of the Jurassic.</td></tr>
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"Many giant dinosaurs walked on four legs but had ancestors that walked on two legs. Scientists want to know about this evolutionary change, but amazingly, no-one came up with a simple method to tell how each dinosaur walked, until now," says Dr Roger Benson.<br />
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By analysing the fossil's bone tissue through osteohistological analysis, Dr Jennifer Botha-Brink from the South African National Museum in Bloemfontein established the animal's age.<br />
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"We can tell by looking at the fossilised bone microstructure that the animal grew rapidly to adulthood. Closely-spaced, annually deposited growth rings at the periphery show that the growth rate had decreased substantially by the time it died," says Botha-Brink. This indicates that the animal had reached adulthood.<br />
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"It was also interesting to see that the bone tissues display aspects of both basal sauropodomorphs and the more derived sauropods, showing that Ledumahadi represents a transitional stage between these two major groups of dinosaurs."<br />
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Ledumahadi lived in the area around Clarens in South Africa's Free State Province. This is currently a scenic mountainous area, but looked much different at that time, with a flat, semi-arid landscape and shallow, intermittently dry streambeds.<br />
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"We can tell from the properties of the sedimentary rock layers in which the bone fossils are preserved that 200 million years ago most of South Africa looked a lot more like the current region around Musina in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, or South Africa's central Karoo," says Dr Emese Bordy.<br />
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Ledumahadi is closely related to other gigantic dinosaurs from Argentina that lived at a similar time, which reinforces that the supercontinent of Pangaea was still assembled in the Early Jurassic. "It shows how easily dinosaurs could have walked from Johannesburg to Buenos Aires at that time," says Choiniere.<br />
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South Africa's Minister of Science and Technology Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane says the discovery of this dinosaur underscores just how important South African palaeontology is to the world.<br />
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"Not only does our country hold the Cradle of Humankind, but we also have fossils that help us understand the rise of the gigantic dinosaurs. This is another example of South Africa taking the high road and making scientific breakthroughs of international significance on the basis of its geographic advantage, as it does in astronomy, marine and polar research, indigenous knowledge, and biodiversity," says Kubayi-Ngubane.<br />
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The research team behind Ledumahadi includes South African-based palaeoscientists, Dr Emese Bordy and Dr Jennifer Botha-Brink, from the University of Cape Town and the South African National Museum in Bloemfontein, respectively.<br />
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The project also had a strong international component with the collaboration of Professor Roger BJ Benson of Oxford University and Dr Blair McPhee, currently residing in Brazil.<br />
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"South Africa employs some of the world's top palaeontologists and it was a privilege to be able to build a working group with them and leading researchers in the UK," says Choiniere, who recently emigrated from the USA to South Africa. "Dinosaurs didn't observe international boundaries and it's important that our research groups don't either."<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.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30993-X" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of the Witwatersrand.</a></span></i></u></div>

New 12-Ton Jurassic dinosaur Was the Largest to Walk the Earth

Jurassic dinosaur fossils seen at the Dinosaur National Monument. The newly-discovered dinosaur is believed to be from the Jurassic perio...

First Fossil Lungs Found in Dinosaur-Era Bird

dinosaur, Fossils 5:12 PM

First Fossil Lungs Found in Dinosaur-Era Bird

Archaeorhynchus spathula was a beaked, feathered bird that lived 120 million years ago. A new fossil discovery suggests it had a respirat...