Geology In

Scientists Uncover 550 Million-Year-Old Fossils of Bug Trails

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A fossil of Yilingia spiciformis and the track it left as it moved. (Z. Chen et al. / Nature)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A 550-million-year-old worm was one of the first animals to move and make decisions, a new study says</span><br />
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In a remarkable evolutionary discovery, a team of scientists co-led by a Virginia Tech geoscientist has discovered what could be among the first trails made by animals on the surface of the Earth roughly a half-billion years ago.<br />
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Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geosciences with the Virginia Tech College of Science, calls the unearthed fossils, including the bodies and trails left by an ancient animal species, the most convincing sign of ancient animal mobility, dating back about 550 million years. Named Yilingia spiciformis - that translates to spiky Yiling bug, Yiling being the Chinese city near the discovery site - the animal was found in multiple layers of rock by Xiao and Zhe Chen, Chuanming Zhou, and Xunlai Yuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology.<br />
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The findings are published in the latest issue of Nature. The trials are from the same rock unit and are roughly the same age as bug-like footprints found by Xiao and his team in a series of digs from 2013 to 2018 in the Yangtze Gorges area of southern China, and date back to the Ediacaran Period, well before the age of dinosaurs or even the Pangea supercontinent. What sets this find apart: The preserved fossil of the animal that made the trail versus the unknowable guesswork where the body has not been preserved.<br />
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"This discovery shows that segmented and mobile animals evolved by 550 million years ago," Xiao said. "Mobility made it possible for animals to make an unmistakable footprint on Earth, both literally and metaphorically. Those are the kind of features you find in a group of animals called bilaterans. This group includes us humans and most animals. Animals and particularly humans are movers and shakers on Earth. Their ability to shape the face of the planet is ultimately tied to the origin of animal motility."<br />
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The animal was a millipede-like creature a quarter-inch to an inch wide and up to 4 inches long that alternately dragged its body across the muddy ocean floor and rested along the way, leaving trails as loing as 23 inches. The animal was an elongated narrow creature, with 50 or so body segments, a left and right side, a back and belly, and a head and a tail.<br />
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The origin of bilaterally symmetric animals - known as bilaterians -- with segmented bodies and directional mobility is a monumental event in early animal evolution, and is estimated to have occurred the Ediacaran Period, between 635 and 539 million years ago. But until this finding by Xiao and his team, there was no convincing fossil evidence to substantiate those estimates. One of the recovered specimens is particularly vital because the animal and the trail it produced just before its death are preserved together.<br />
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Remarkably, the find also marks what may be the first sign of decision making among animals - the trails suggest an effort to move toward or away from something, perhaps under the direction of a sophisticated central nerve system, Xiao said. The mobility of animals led to environmental and ecological impacts on the Earth surface system and ultimately led to the Cambrian substrate and agronomic revolutions, he said.<br />
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"We are the most impactful animal on Earth," added Xiao, also an affiliated member of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech. "We make a huge footprint, not only from locomotion, but in many other and more impactful activities related to our ability to move. When and how animal locomotion evolved defines an important geological and evolutionary context of anthropogenic impact on the surface of the Earth."<br />
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Rachel Wood, a professor in the School of GeoSciences at University of Edinburgh in Scotland, who was not involved with the study, said, "This is a remarkable finding of highly significant fossils. We now have evidence that segmented animals were present and had gained an ability to move across the sea floor before the Cambrian, and more notably we can tie the actual trace-maker to the trace. Such preservation is unusual and provides considerable insight into a major step in the evolution of animals."<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2019/09/Science-Shuhai_Xiao_half_billion_animal_trail.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by  <a href="https://vt.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Virginia Tech.</a></span></i></u></div>

Scientists Uncover 550 Million-Year-Old Fossils of Bug Trails

A fossil of Yilingia spiciformis and the track it left as it moved. (Z. Chen et al. / Nature) A 550-million-year-old worm was one of ...

There's a Lost Continent Hiding Beneath Europe

Earth History, Researches, Tectonic 7:59 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo: The Sun</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Researchers uncovered traces of a lost continent that disappeared under what is today Europe about 120 million years ago.</span><br />
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THE HISTORY of a lost continent buried under Europe for 100million years has been revealed for the first time. Greater Adria was a giant landmass the size of Greenland that dramatically collided with our own continent.<br />
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The crash ploughed most of Greater Adria under the ground and sea while the rest crumbled into rocks on land. Remnants of the geological blow remain millions of years later, say an international team of scientists.<br />
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They analysed rocks that were originally part of Greater Adria found in mountain ranges stretching from Spain to Iran. A lengthy paper penned by the group gives a blow-by-blow account of the Earth's geological history stretching back 240million years.<br />
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Hinsbergen and his team spent a decade collecting and analyzing rocks that used to be part of this ancient continent. The mountain belts where these Greater Adrian rocks are found span about 30 different countries, Hinsbergen told Live Science. "Every country has their own geological survey and their own maps and their own stories and their own continents," he said. With this study, "we brought that all together in one big picture." <br />
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Earth is covered in large tectonic plates that move relative to each other. Greater Adria belonged to the African tectonic plate (but was not a part of the African continent, since there was an ocean between them), which was slowly sliding beneath the Eurasian tectonic plate, in what is now southern Europe. <br />
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Around 100 million to 120 million years ago, Greater Adria smashed into Europe and began diving beneath it — but some of the rocks were too light and so did not sink into Earth's mantle. Instead, they were  "scraped off" — in a way that's similar to what happens when a person puts their arm under a table and then slowly moves it underneath: The sleeve get crumpled up, he said. This crumpling formed mountain chains such as the Alps. It also kept these ancient rocks locked in place, where geologists could find them.<br />
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Hinsbergen and his team looked at the orientation of tiny, magnetic minerals formed by primeval bacteria in these rocks. The bacteria make these magnetic particles in order to orient themselves with the Earth's magnetic field. When the bacteria die, the magnetic minerals are left behind in the sediment, Hinsbergen said. <br />
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With time the sediment around them turns into rock, freezing them in the orientation they were in hundreds of millions of years ago. Hinsbergen and his team found that in many of these regions, the rocks had undergone very large rotations.<br />
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What's more, Hinsbergen's team pieced together large rocks that used to belong together, such as in a belt of volcanoes or in a big coral reef. Moving faults scattered the rocks "like pieces of a broken plate," he said.<br />
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It's like a big jigsaw puzzle, Hinsbergen said. "All the bits and pieces are jumbled up and I spent the last 10 years making the puzzle again." From there, they used software to create detailed maps of the ancient continent and confirmed that it moved northward while twisting slightly, before colliding with Europe. <br />
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After many years working in the Mediterranean region, Hinsbergen has now moved on to reconstruct the lost plates in the Pacific Ocean. "But I'll probably return — probably in 5 or 10 years from now when a whole bunch of young students will demonstrate that parts are wrong," Hinsbergan said. "Then I'll come back and see if I can fix it."<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The study was published in the journal  <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X19302230#ab0010" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gondwana Research</a>.</span></i></u></div>

There's a Lost Continent Hiding Beneath Europe

Photo: The Sun Researchers uncovered traces of a lost continent that disappeared under what is today Europe about 120 million years a...

Rocks at Asteroid Impact Site Record First Day of Dinosaur Extinction

dinosaur, extinction 7:34 PM

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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Asteroid as Powerful as 10 Billion World War II Atomic Bombs May Have Wiped Out the Dinosaurs</span><br />
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When the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs slammed into the planet, the impact set wildfires, triggered tsunamis and blasted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that it blocked the sun, which caused the global cooling that ultimately doomed the dinos.<br />
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That's the scenario scientists have hypothesized. Now, a new study led by The University of Texas at Austin has confirmed it by finding hard evidence in the hundreds of feet of rocks that filled the impact crater within the first 24 hours after impact.<br />
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The evidence includes bits of charcoal, jumbles of rock brought in by the tsunami's backflow and conspicuously absent sulfur. They are all part of a rock record that offers the most detailed look yet into the aftermath of the catastrophe that ended the Age of Dinosaurs, said Sean Gulick, a research professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) at the Jackson School of Geosciences.<br />
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"It's an expanded record of events that we were able to recover from within ground zero," said Gulick, who led the study and co-led the 2016 International Ocean Discovery Program scientific drilling mission that retrieved the rocks from the impact site offshore of the Yucatan Peninsula. "It tells us about impact processes from an eyewitness location."<br />
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The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 9 and builds on earlier work co-led and led by the Jackson School that described how the crater formed and how life quickly recovered at the impact site. An international team of more than two dozen scientists contributed to this study.<br />
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Most of the material that filled the crater within hours of impact was produced at the impact site or was swept in by seawater pouring back into the crater from the surrounding Gulf of Mexico. Just one day deposited about 425 feet of material -- a rate that's among the highest ever encountered in the geologic record. This breakneck rate of accumulation means that the rocks record what was happening in the environment within and around the crater in the minutes and hours after impact and give clues about the longer-lasting effects of the impact that wiped out 75% of life on the planet.<br />
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Gulick described it as a short-lived inferno at the regional level, followed by a long period of global cooling.<br />
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"We fried them and then we froze them," Gulick said. "Not all the dinosaurs died that day, but many dinosaurs did."<br />
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Researchers estimate the asteroid hit with the equivalent power of 10 billion atomic bombs of the size used in World War II. The blast ignited trees and plants that were thousands of miles away and triggered a massive tsunami that reached as far inland as Illinois. Inside the crater, researchers found charcoal and a chemical biomarker associated with soil fungi within or just above layers of sand that shows signs of being deposited by resurging waters. This suggests that the charred landscape was pulled into the crater with the receding waters of the tsunami.<br />
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Jay Melosh, a Purdue University professor and expert on impact cratering, said that finding evidence for wildfire helps scientists know that their understanding of the asteroid impact is on the right track.<br />
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"It was a momentous day in the history of life, and this is a very clear documentation of what happened at ground zero," said Melosh, who was not involved with this study.<br />
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However, one of the most important takeaways from the research is what was missing from the core samples. The area surrounding the impact crater is full of sulfur-rich rocks. But there was no sulfur in the core.<br />
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That finding supports a theory that the asteroid impact vaporized the sulfur-bearing minerals present at the impact site and released it into the atmosphere, where it wreaked havoc on the Earth's climate, reflecting sunlight away from the planet and causing global cooling. Researchers estimate that at least 325 billion metric tons would have been released by the impact. To put that in perspective, that's about four orders of magnitude greater than the sulfur that was spewed during the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa -- which cooled the Earth's climate by an average of 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit for five years.<br />
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Although the asteroid impact created mass destruction at the regional level, it was this global climate change that caused a mass extinction, killing off the dinosaurs along with most other life on the planet at the time.<br />
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"The real killer has got to be atmospheric," Gulick said. "The only way you get a global mass extinction like this is an atmospheric effect."<br />
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The research was funded by a number of international and national support organizations, including the National Science Foundation.<br />
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<i><u><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://news.utexas.edu/2019/09/09/rocks-at-asteroid-impact-site-record-first-day-of-dinosaur-extinction/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of Texas at Austin</a>. </span></u></i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; 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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Rocks at Asteroid Impact Site Record First Day of Dinosaur Extinction

Asteroid as Powerful as 10 Billion World War II Atomic Bombs May Have Wiped Out the Dinosaurs When the asteroid that wiped out the di...

Pyrite: Interesting Facts About Fool's Gold

Geochemistry, Mineralogy 7:12 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pyritized ammonite. From Saratov Russia. Upper Callovian (around 162 million years). <br />
Photo: Leah Luten</td></tr>
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Pyrite  is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula FeS<sub>2</sub> (iron(II)  disulfide). Pyrite is considered the most common of the sulfide  minerals.<br />
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Pyrite is sometimes called Fools Gold because of its similarity in color and shape to Gold. In the old mining days, Pyrite was sometimes mistaken for Gold, as they frequently occur together. <br />
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Pyrite occurs in numerous shapes and habits. The smaller crystal aggregates may give off a beautiful glistening effect in light, and the larger crystals may be perfectly formed, including fascinating cubes, penetration twins, and other interesting crystal forms.<br />
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Pyrite has the same chemical formula as the rarer mineral Marcasite, but it crystallizes in a different crystal system, thereby classifying it as a separate mineral species. <br />
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Pyrite is usually found associated with other sulfides or oxides in quartz veins, sedimentary rock, and metamorphic rock, as well as in coal beds and as a replacement mineral in fossils, but has also been identified in the sclerites of scaly-foot gastropods.<br />
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 Despite being nicknamed fool's gold, pyrite is sometimes found in association with small quantities of gold.<br />
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Pyrite is quite easy to distinguish from gold: pyrite is much lighter, but harder than gold and cannot be scratched with a fingernail or pocket knife.<br />
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Pyritization: Organisms may become pyritized when they are in marine sediments saturated with iron sulfides. As organic matter decays it releases sulfide which reacts with dissolved iron in the surrounding waters. Pyrite replaces carbonate shell material due to an undersaturation of carbonate in the surrounding waters. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qF3XeWi0d5E/XXkZ8Y17ylI/AAAAAAAARaE/D4GHZ3EeQfQtlX8_X1-oyOae3r0IBuKMACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/This%2Bis%2Ban%2Bexcellent%2Bexample%2Bof%2Btwo%2Bintergrown%2Bcubes%2Bof%2Bpyrite.%2Bfrom%2BNavaj%25C3%25BAn%252C%2BLa%2BRioja%252C%2BSpain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Pyrite: Interesting Facts About  Fool's Gold" border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="640" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qF3XeWi0d5E/XXkZ8Y17ylI/AAAAAAAARaE/D4GHZ3EeQfQtlX8_X1-oyOae3r0IBuKMACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/This%2Bis%2Ban%2Bexcellent%2Bexample%2Bof%2Btwo%2Bintergrown%2Bcubes%2Bof%2Bpyrite.%2Bfrom%2BNavaj%25C3%25BAn%252C%2BLa%2BRioja%252C%2BSpain.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is an excellent example of two intergrown cubes of pyrite. from Navajún, La Rioja, Spain<br />
Photo Mardani Fine Minerals</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4xu5Bl_AKHY/XXkatY6_ciI/AAAAAAAARaM/wnQnQTZzNnsaTuNkO3gF29eBvllm2jrTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Large%2BSize%2BNatural%2BPyritized%2BAmmonite%2BFossils%2Bfrom%2BRussia..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Pyrite: Interesting Facts About  Fool's Gold" border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4xu5Bl_AKHY/XXkatY6_ciI/AAAAAAAARaM/wnQnQTZzNnsaTuNkO3gF29eBvllm2jrTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/Large%2BSize%2BNatural%2BPyritized%2BAmmonite%2BFossils%2Bfrom%2BRussia..jpg" title="" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Large Size Natural Pyritized Ammonite Fossils from Russia. <br />
Their Chambers are filled with druzy Pyrite!!<br />
Photo credit: Daniel Virgadaula</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">See Also:</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.geologyin.com/2019/07/what-is-crazy-lace-agate.html" target="_blank">What is Crazy Lace Agate?</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.geologyin.com/2018/10/chrysanthemum-stone-natural-flower-stone.html" target="_blank">Chrysanthemum Stone: Natural Flower Stone</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://www.geologyin.com/2018/04/what-is-pseudomorph-mineral.html" target="_blank">What Is Pseudomorph Mineral?</a></span><br />
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Pyrite: Interesting Facts About Fool's Gold

Pyritized ammonite. From Saratov Russia. Upper Callovian (around 162 million years). Photo: Leah Luten Pyrite is an iron sulfide with...

Researchers Unearth 'New' Mass-extinction

Earth History, Researches 7:41 PM

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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A team of scientists has concluded that earth experienced a previously underestimated severe mass-extinction event, which occurred about 260 million years ago, raising the total of major mass extinctions in the geologic record to six.</span><br />
<br />
"It is crucial that we know the number of severe mass extinctions and their timing in order to investigate their causes," explains Michael Rampino, a professor in New York University's Department of Biology and a co-author of the analysis, which appears in the journal Historical Biology. "Notably, all six major mass extinctions are correlated with devastating environmental upheavals -- specifically, massive flood-basalt eruptions, each covering more than a million square kilometers with thick lava flows."<br />
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Scientists had previously determined that there were five major mass-extinction events, wiping out large numbers of species and defining the ends of geological periods: the end of the Ordovician (443 million years ago), the Late Devonian (372 million years ago), the Permian (252 million years ago), the Triassic (201 million years ago), and the Cretaceous (66 million years ago).<br />
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And, in fact, many researchers have raised concerns about the contemporary, ongoing loss of species diversity -- a development that might be labeled a "seventh extinction" because such a modern mass extinction, scientists have predicted, could end up being as severe as these past events.<br />
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The Historical Biology work, which also included Nanjing University's Shu-zhong Shen, focused on the Guadalupian, or Middle Permian period, which lasted from 272 to about 260 million years ago.<br />
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Here, the researchers observe, the end-Guadalupian extinction event -- which affected life on land and in the seas -- occurred at the same time as the Emeishan flood-basalt eruption that produced the Emeishan Traps, an extensive rock formation, found today in southern China. The eruption's impact was akin to those causing other known severe mass extinctions, Rampino says.<br />
<br />
"Massive eruptions such as this one release large amounts of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide and methane, that cause severe global warming, with warm, oxygen-poor oceans that are not conducive to marine life," he notes.<br />
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"In terms of both losses in the number of species and overall ecological damage, the end-Guadalupian event now ranks as a major mass extinction, similar to the other five," the authors write.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/september/researchers-unearth--new--extinction.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">New York University</a>.</span></i></u></div>

Researchers Unearth 'New' Mass-extinction

A team of scientists has concluded that earth experienced a previously underestimated severe mass-extinction event, which occurred abou...

Yellowstone’s Steamboat Geyser Breaks Yearly Eruption Record

Geology, USA, Yellowstone 7:39 PM

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<br />
The Steamboat Geyser at Yellowstone National Park just broke a record.<br />
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According to the US Geologic Survey, the world’s tallest active geyser had erupted 34 times as of Tuesday, the largest number ever recorded in a year.<br />
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Last year’s record was 32 eruptions and prior to that, the record was 29 in 1964.<br />
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Steamboat’s larger eruptions tend to last from three to 40 minutes and are followed by powerful jets of steam.<br />
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Although the eruptions might seem alarming to some, experts say it’s not necessarily something to worry about.<br />
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“They’re mostly random and experience phases of alternating eruptive activity,” said Michael Poland, the USGS scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, according to KXPI.<br />
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“So while fascinating, it’s not unusual, nor cause for concern.”<br />
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Poland said it’s a misconception that geyser eruptions are related to earthquake activity, and that visitors should not fear any deeper changes in the park’s volcanic system.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Yellowstone?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Yellowstone</a> Monthly Update<br />
September 3, 2019, 10:53 AM MDT<a href="https://t.co/mXhpTFYLYk">https://t.co/mXhpTFYLYk</a><br />
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- Steamboat had 3 more water eruptions in August, setting a new calendar-year record<br />
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- 128 located quakes in August, including a swarm near West Thumb<br />
<br />
- no significant caldera deformation <a href="https://t.co/xsQgYVY9jM">pic.twitter.com/xsQgYVY9jM</a></div>
— USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) <a href="https://twitter.com/USGSVolcanoes/status/1168932448333377538?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 3, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Yellowstone’s Steamboat Geyser Breaks Yearly Eruption Record

The Steamboat Geyser at Yellowstone National Park just broke a record. According to the US Geologic Survey, the world’s tallest activ...

M5.9 Earthquake Detected Off Oregon Coast

7:11 PM

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A strong earthquake has hit the off coast region of Oregon on Thursday morning, according to United States Geological Survey earthquake alerts.<br />
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A 5.9-magnitude earthquake was detected Thursday morning off the Oregon Coast.<br />
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At 8:02 a.m., the National Geological Survey placed the earthquake's epicenter about 192 miles west of Coos Bay on Oregon's south coast.<br />
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No tsunami is expected on the coastline, according to the National Tsunami Warning Center.<br />
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The earthquake was preceded by a 3.7-magnitude earthquake about 32 miles closer to the Oregon coastline detected at 7:25 a.m.<br />
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Both of today's earthquakes follow a 6.3-magnitude earthquake a week ago in the same region.</div>
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Prelim M5.9 Earthquake off the coast of Oregon Sep-05 15:02 UTC, updates <a href="https://t.co/aEyIKnuGd3">https://t.co/aEyIKnuGd3</a></div>
— USGS Big Quakes (@USGSBigQuakes) <a href="https://twitter.com/USGSBigQuakes/status/1169631790748839936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 5, 2019</a></blockquote>
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M5.9 Earthquake Detected Off Oregon Coast

A strong earthquake has hit the off coast region of Oregon on Thursday morning, according to United States Geological Survey earthquak...

What Drives Plate Tectonics?

earth, Earth History, Tectonic 7:28 PM

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8K6Qqobp7ZQ/XW6TaVUjaZI/AAAAAAAARYE/vNmafYnRhzAkT7JJufOfzWAvLOtGYM_TgCLcBGAs/s1600/What%2BDrives%2BPlate%2BTectonics%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="What Drives Plate Tectonics?" border="0" data-original-height="888" data-original-width="1210" height="468" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8K6Qqobp7ZQ/XW6TaVUjaZI/AAAAAAAARYE/vNmafYnRhzAkT7JJufOfzWAvLOtGYM_TgCLcBGAs/s640/What%2BDrives%2BPlate%2BTectonics%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Global paleomagnetic plate reconstructions a. 270 Ma, b. 180 Ma, and inset the Present Tethyan Realm. Credit: ©Science China Press</td></tr>
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<br />
Plate tectonics was founded in the late 1960s, and it concerns the distribution and movements of plates, the uppermost layer of the Earth. Plate movements not only control the distributions of earthquakes, volcanoes, and mineral resources in the crust, but also affect the ocean and atmospheric circulations above the crust. Therefore, plate tectonics has been regarded as the fundamental unifying paradigm for understanding the history of Earth.<br />
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Despite the widely accepted kinematics of plate tectonics, the driving force of plate tectonics is still one of the most challenging problems since the birth of this theory. The subduction of oceanic slabs is considered the dominant driving force based on observations of Cenozoic subduction systems along the circum-Pacific region.<br />
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However, the difficulty in observing the oceanic subduction slabs beneath collisional orogens hampers the ability to quantitatively evaluate the role of subducting oceanic slabs. Alternative driving forces such as ridge push, continental slab-pull, plume upwelling and large-scale mantle convection have been proposed at different subduction-collision belts along the Tethyan Realm (Fig 1), the largest continental collisional zone. The Tethyan evolution can be summarized as the process by which many continental fragments were ruptured sequentially from Gondwana and then drift towards Laurasia/Eurasia.<br />
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Scientists from the State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing found "switches" between continental rupture, continental collision, and oceanic subduction initiation in the Tethyan evolution after a reappraisal of geological records from the surface and new global-scale geophysical images at depth. They proposed that the "switches" were all controlled by oceanic subductions.<br />
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All oceanic Tethyan slabs acted in a way that transferred the Gondwana-detached continents in the south into the terminal in the north, so they depicted the scenario as a "Tethyan one-way train" (Figure. 2a and b). The engine of the "train" was the negative buoyancy of the subducting oceanic slabs. The results also shed light on supercontinent assembly and breakup cycles. Subductions not only assemble the supercontinent but also effectively break-up the supercontinent.<br />
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The new results will not close the discussions on driving force of plate tectonics, but future Tethyan research may test the new proposal and improve the understanding of how plate tectonics works.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-flVzt8375eM/XW6T0jMGkJI/AAAAAAAARYM/2Dkn-aTHNm0u-VPKjzALQ3aPnC1DSNaswCLcBGAs/s1600/1-whatdrivespl%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="803" data-original-width="1206" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-flVzt8375eM/XW6T0jMGkJI/AAAAAAAARYM/2Dkn-aTHNm0u-VPKjzALQ3aPnC1DSNaswCLcBGAs/s640/1-whatdrivespl%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A schematic showing how subduction drives the 'Tethyan One-way Train' between terminals of Gondwana and Eurasia. a. After consumption of mid-ocean ridge, subduction dragging causes the rift of the rear continent. b. Drifts of the detached continent will finally collide toward the subduction-directed continent, and then continental collision induces subduction initiation in a new ocean. Since the oceanic subduction initiation, the mid-ocean ridge will be consumed towards the subduction direction then repeat the process of 'a'. The light to dark belt represents oceanic crust with ages from young to old. Credit: ©Science China Press</td></tr>
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<br />
<i><u><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11430-019-9393-4" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://www.springer.com/societies+&+publishing+partners/chinese+library+of+science/science+in+china+press?SGWID=0-169002-0-0-0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Science China Press.</a></span></u></i></div>

What Drives Plate Tectonics?

Global paleomagnetic plate reconstructions a. 270 Ma, b. 180 Ma, and inset the Present Tethyan Realm. Credit: ©Science China Press Pl...

Scientists Confirm The Discovery of a Mineral Never Before Seen in Nature

Geochemistry, Meteorite, Mineralogy 7:53 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside the Wedderburn meteorite. Source: Rodney Start/Museums Victoria</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Mineral 'NEVER seen before in nature' is discovered inside a meteorite in Australia, scientists claim</span><br />
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It was found along the side of a road in a remote Australian gold rush town. In the old days, Wedderburn was a hotspot for prospectors – it occasionally still is – but nobody there had ever seen a nugget quite like this one.<br />
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The Wedderburn meteorite, found just north-east of the town in 1951, was a small 210-gram chunk of strange-looking space rock that fell out of the sky. For decades, scientists have been trying to decipher its secrets, and researchers just decoded another.<br />
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In a new study led by Caltech mineralogist Chi Ma, scientists analysed the Wedderburn meteorite and verified the first natural occurrence of what they call 'edscottite': a rare form of iron-carbide mineral that's never been found in nature.<br />
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Named after the Australian town that it was found in, back in 1951, the Wedderburn meteorite has unveiled a new side: a mineral that has never been seen naturally on Earth has been founded inside it. <br />
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The mineral has been named 'edscottite Fe<sub>5</sub>C<sub>2</sub>,' after Edward Scott, a renowned cosmochemist from the University of Hawaii.<br />
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The mineral was discovered after a team of researchers from CalTech, lead by mineralogist Chi Ma. They closely examined a segment of what's left of the original 220-gram red and black rock.<br />
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The original meteorite is kept as part of the Museums Victoria's collection in Australia. <br />
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A mineral is an assortment of atoms set into a specific form, and naturally occurring in nature. For example, salt and diamonds are both minerals, one is made of sodium chloride, and the other is made of pure carbon.</div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What did the researchers find here?</span></h4>
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Inside the Wedderburn meteorite, the researchers discovered a new mineral. Microscopically, it appears as small white crystals.<br />
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This mineral is a combination of carbon and iron atoms, set together in a particular pattern. "This meteorite had an abundance of carbon in it. And as it slowly cooled down, the iron and carbon came together and formed this mineral," said Dr. Stuart Mills, Museums Victoria's senior curator of geosciences.</div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">What is new about 'edscottite'?</span></h4>
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A synthetic edscottite has, in fact, been discovered previously - typically found inside smelters. It is a phase that iron goes through while it is smelted into steel. <br />
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The difference here is that edscottite has never been known or discovered to be naturally occurring in nature. Only when minerals are found in nature can they be named.<br />
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This is what makes this discovery so exciting. As Dr. Mills pointed out, "We have discovered 500,000 to 600,000 minerals in the lab, but fewer than 6,000 that nature’s done itself."</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Wedderburn meteorite's story</span></h4>
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Many scientists have claimed chunks of it over the years in the name of research, and only one-third of the meteorite is still left. Let's see if any more interesting discoveries can be made from the Wedderburn Meteorite.<br />
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The meteorite is believed to have emanated from an old planet, which no longer exists. As it blew apart, meteorites from its core got thrust out into space.<br />
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The Wedderburn meteorite was one such chunk from the blasted planet. It was circling up in space for millions of years, before colliding on Earth, and into the Australian territory.</div>
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<br />
<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The findings are reported in <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ammin.2019.104.issue-9/am-2019-7102/am-2019-7102.xml" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Mineralogist</a>.</span></i></u></div>

Scientists Confirm The Discovery of a Mineral Never Before Seen in Nature

Inside the Wedderburn meteorite. Source: Rodney Start/Museums Victoria Mineral 'NEVER seen before in nature' is discovered in...