Extinct Woolly Rhinoceros Found Frozen in Siberian Permafrost

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QPULbRn13sw/X-yd1dqRF5I/AAAAAAAASu4/aiTE38HR6DYINewd-hINYYLutfUkydmBgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1351/Extinct%2BWoolly%2BRhinoceros%2BFound%2BFrozen%2Bin%2BSiberian%2BPermafrost.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Extinct Woolly Rhinoceros Found Frozen in Siberian Permafrost" border="0" data-original-height="848" data-original-width="1351" height="402" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QPULbRn13sw/X-yd1dqRF5I/AAAAAAAASu4/aiTE38HR6DYINewd-hINYYLutfUkydmBgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h402/Extinct%2BWoolly%2BRhinoceros%2BFound%2BFrozen%2Bin%2BSiberian%2BPermafrost.jpg" title="Extinct Woolly Rhinoceros Found Frozen in Siberian Permafrost" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sasha the baby woolly rhino found in 2014 in Yakutia lived 34,000 years ago. <br />Picture: Albert Protopopov<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p> AN EXTINCT woolly rhinoceros has been found in an incredible condition after spending up to 50,000 years frozen in Siberian permafrost.<br /><br />The frozen carcass was discovered 80 per cent intact by scientists in the Abyisky district of Yakutia in Russia.<br /><br />It was discovered close to the site where the world’s only baby woolly rhino - named Sasha - was dug out in 2014. Two extinct cave lion cubs were also found in the same area last year.<br /><br />The juvenile rhino with thick hazel-coloured hair and the horn, found next to the carcass was discovered in the middle of August in permafrost deposits by river Tirekhtyakh in the Abyisky ulus (district) of the Republic of Sakha.<br /><br />The sensational discovery is still in the Arctic Yakutia waiting for ice roads to form, so that it can be delivered to scientists in the republic’s capital Yakutsk. <br /></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />It is the best preserved to date juvenile woolly rhino ever found in Yakutia, with a lot of its internal organs - including its teeth, part of the intestines, a lump of fat and tissues - kept intact for thousands of years in permafrost. <br /><br />‘The young rhino was between three and four years old and lived separately from its mother when it died, most likely by drowning’, said Dr Valery Plotnikov from the Academy of Sciences who has been to the discovery site and made the first description of the find. <br /><br />‘The gender of the animal is still unknown. We are waiting for the radiocarbon analyses to define when it lived, the most likely range of dates is between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago. The rhino has a very thick short underfur, very likely it died in summer’, Dr Plotnikov said. <br /><br />The rhino’s carcass is 80 per cent intact; it was discovered by local resident Alexei Savvin close to the site where the world’s only baby woolly rhino called Sasha was dug out in 2014. Sasha’s aged has been since confirmed as 34,000 years. <br /><br />Two extinct cave lion cubs later called Boris and Sparta were also found in the Abyisky district of Yakutia last year close to the Tirekhtyakh River.<br /><br />Sasha the wooly rhino was seven months old when it died and had lightly-coloured strawberry blond fur/hair. The baby rhino also had stubs of two horns.<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5na5tpQZlQ0/X-yewMelD0I/AAAAAAAASvA/BmqrAEJQHsMUlCkGTvC_5b31WuHhbGd0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1220/Frozen%2BCarcass%2Bof%2Ban%2BExtinct%2BWoolly%2BRhino%2BFrom%2Bthe%2BIce%2BAge%2BIs%2BUnearthed%2BFrom%2Bthe%2BSiberian%2BPermafrost.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The frozen carcass was found 80 per cent intact" border="0" data-original-height="804" data-original-width="1220" height="211" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5na5tpQZlQ0/X-yewMelD0I/AAAAAAAASvA/BmqrAEJQHsMUlCkGTvC_5b31WuHhbGd0ACLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h211/Frozen%2BCarcass%2Bof%2Ban%2BExtinct%2BWoolly%2BRhino%2BFrom%2Bthe%2BIce%2BAge%2BIs%2BUnearthed%2BFrom%2Bthe%2BSiberian%2BPermafrost.jpg" title="The frozen carcass was found 80 per cent intact" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The frozen carcass was found 80 per cent intact<br />Credit: East2west News<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p>Dr Plotnikov said of Sasha: ‘We have learned that woolly rhinoceroses were covered in very thick hair. Previously, we could judge this only from rock paintings discovered in France. <br /><br />'Now, judging by the thick coat with the undercoat, we can conclude that the rhinoceroses were fully adapted to the cold climate from a young age.’<br /><br /><br /></p>

Extinct Woolly Rhinoceros Found Frozen in Siberian Permafrost

Sasha the baby woolly rhino found in 2014 in Yakutia lived 34,000 years ago. Picture: Albert Protopopov  AN EXTINCT woolly rhinoceros has be...

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Kernowite: New Green Mineral Discovered in 220-year-old Rock

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KVfsc-fpjv4/X-oGvE-HiVI/AAAAAAAASug/2us6s2mV1-MKiWUrWRo_G3YK1-kgeKNywCLcBGAsYHQ/s1281/new-mineral-kernowite-full-width.jpg.thumb.1160%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Kernowite: New Green Mineral Discovered in 220-year-old Rock" border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="1281" height="370" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KVfsc-fpjv4/X-oGvE-HiVI/AAAAAAAASug/2us6s2mV1-MKiWUrWRo_G3YK1-kgeKNywCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h370/new-mineral-kernowite-full-width.jpg.thumb.1160%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="Kernowite: New Green Mineral Discovered in 220-year-old Rock" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kernowite: New Green Mineral Discovered in 220-year-old Rock. Kernowite (green color). Image credit: The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Known from just a single location, a new species of mineral has been described from the UK. <br /><br />A sample of rock that was collected from a mine in Cornwall some 220 years ago has turned out to be an entirely new species of mineral.<br /><br />While most new minerals are so small that their colour isn't easy to appreciate, this latest addition forms large emerald-green crystals.<br /><br />Mike Rumsey is the Principal Curator of Minerals at the Museum and is the one who initiated the investigation and subsequently discovered the new mineral with colleagues at the NHM and collaborators from Slovakia and the Diamond Lightsource in Harwell, Oxford.<br /><br />'I was investigating a mineral called liroconite so we could curate it properly, but also because it's my favourite mineral!’ explains Mike. 'Liroconite is this beautiful, gorgeous bright blue mineral that comes from Cornwall and I was trying to understand why its colour varies from bright teal-blue all the way to a dark emerald green.<br /><br />'It turns out that the darkest green samples are sufficiently chemically different to the blue's that we, as mineralogists, would define it as a new species.'<br /></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />The new description has now been approved by the governing body and the new species kernowite will be published in Mineralogical Magazine in the new year. A journal started back in the UK in 1876 with founders from the old BM(NH).<br /><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">New species of minerals</h4><p style="text-align: left;">When people talk about the discovery of a new species many will tend to think of a new plant or animal. But when Carl Linnaeus first came up with the now universal system of naming things in the eighteenth century, he also included the minerals within this system.  <br /><br />This means that whenever a new mineral is described, it is also classed as a new species. <br /><br />'Like other branches of natural sciences, minerals and rocks were organised by early scientists in a way that allowed people to recognise connections and links between them,' says Mike. 'The term species in the life sciences really gained traction thanks to the work of Linnaeus.<br /><br />'He also included the mineral kingdom in his classifications, so minerals ended up with some of the same language for their descriptions. Other terms like genus have not made it through though, as minerals don't really have a strongly hierarchical structure in their organisation, although that's something being discussed by scientists currently.'<br /><br />To be described as a new species, a new mineral needs to meet a number of criteria.<br /><br />These relate largely to determining what the chemistry of the new material is and how the atoms within the material are arranged in three-dimensional space and then how that arrangement repeats to make up the crystals that we see. This is what mineralogists call crystal structure.<br /><br />'In the crystal structure of liroconite, one of the positions where you can put an atom can contain either aluminium or iron,' explains Mike. 'For liroconite, the position is dominantly filled with aluminium and the physical crystal ends up being blue.<br /><br />'For the new mineral kernowite the position is instead dominantly filled with iron and the result is a green crystal. We think that the more iron the darker the green, but that still needs some more work and more samples to confirm. Both minerals have exactly the same crystal structure meaning that all the atoms are in the same positions, it is just the chemical composition that varies.'<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Cornish type</h4><p style="text-align: left;">There are only around 100 new species of mineral described every year, and not many with large colourful crystals.<br /><br />It is even rarer to have a new mineral described from the UK, something which only happens once every three or four years on average. The new species is currently known from a single location in Cornwall, which has given rise to its new name kernowite, after Kernow which is the Cornish word for Cornwall. <br /><br />'Based on it's mining history Cornwall is a world UNESCO heritage site known around the world for the discovery for many new minerals,' says Mike. 'However, a lot of these discoveries happened over 100 years go when the mines were still active, so the discovery of a new mineral from Cornwall, particularly one that related to the regions most famous mineral, is really quite amazing.'<br /><br />The mine from which kernowite has been found is also the location from which the majority of the world's liroconite is derived, which is highly prized among collectors.<br /><br />'Most liroconite comes from this place called Wheal Gorland,' explains Mike. 'The mine was used between around 1790 and 1909, but it has been demolished now. There is a housing estate on it and there is nothing left. It’s an extinct locality, we can never go back.'<br /><br />Because liroconite is such a famous mineral, there could be samples of kernowite in other museums that have for all this time also been grouped with the liroconite, so the community may well discover these now the other curators know what they're looking for.<br /><br />But with the demolition of the mine, it means that more samples of the mineral may never be found again.<br /><br />'What we've got is a bit like a little time capsule,' says Mike. 'The fact that this sample was preserved in a museum means that we can do this kind of research because we'd never be able to go back and collect any more.'<br /><br />Hopefully other samples will be found in other public and private collections, but until that happens then the one sample held at the Museum and another in a private collection are the only known examples of Kernowite in the entire world.    </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">What is a mineral?</h4><p style="text-align: left;">A mineral is naturally occurring chemical substance formed by geological processes<br />A rock is an object formed of one, or many minerals in combination<br />Many minerals form beautiful crystals, the most prized being those with bright colours, glass-like transparency and attractive crystal forms</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"><u><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/december/beautiful-new-emerald-green-mineral-described-from-cornwall.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://nhm.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Natural History Museum (NHM).</a></span></i></u><br /></p>

Kernowite: New Green Mineral Discovered in 220-year-old Rock

Kernowite: New Green Mineral Discovered in 220-year-old Rock. Kernowite (green color). Image credit: The Trustees of the Natural History Mus...

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99-Million-Year-Old Fossil Flower Found Encased in Burmese Amber

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m1sGtTogjPU/X-dZ0_RQV8I/AAAAAAAASuU/I67xe8rETjANnM66oB9HsqretIzq_WjSACLcBGAsYHQ/s1368/image_9184_1e-Valviloculus-pleristaminis%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="99-Million-Year-Old Fossil Flower Found Encased in Burmese Amber" border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="1368" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m1sGtTogjPU/X-dZ0_RQV8I/AAAAAAAASuU/I67xe8rETjANnM66oB9HsqretIzq_WjSACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/image_9184_1e-Valviloculus-pleristaminis%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="99-Million-Year-Old Fossil Flower Found Encased in Burmese Amber" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">99-Million-Year-Old Fossil Flower Found Encased in Burmese Amber. Valviloculus pleristaminis, flower in lateral view. Image credit: Poinar, Jr. et al., doi: 10.17348/jbrit.v14.i2.1014.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /><p></p><p>A rare flower is finally getting its moment in the sun, almost 100 million years after it blossomed.<br /><br />Researchers at Oregon State University have identified a new species of angiosperm, or flowering plant, from the Cretaceous Period that was preserved in a shard of amber found in what is now Myanmar.<br /><br />Sometimes you don't know what you've got till it's gone. Valviloculus pleristaminis makes for a perfect example.<br /><br />Scientists only recently identified this mysterious, extinct flower. It once bloomed in the Cretaceous period - a floral relic of a bygone age, preserved in time-stopping amber since some nameless day when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth.<br /></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />"This isn't quite a Christmas flower but it is a beauty, especially considering it was part of a forest that existed 100 million years ago," says emeritus professor George Poinar Jr. from Oregon State University.<br /><br />Poinar Jr. is something of an authority on the time-capsule-esque capabilities of amber.<br /><br />The octogenarian entomologist is widely regarded as the scientist who popularised the phenomenon of prehistoric insects and nematodes being trapped in tree resin over geological timescales – ideas that took flight, literally much of the time, in the pop culture fantasy of Jurassic Park.<br /><br />This lifelong focus began decades ago, but Poinar Jr.'s academic output is still prodigious. In recent years he's described ancient, engorged ticks, discovered new orders of insect life, traced the origins of malaria, and found his fair share of forgotten flowers.<br /><br />V. pleristaminis, which represents both a new genus and species of flower, is among the latest in this ever-expanding bouquet.<br /><br />"The male flower is tiny, about 2 millimetres across, but it has some 50 stamens arranged like a spiral, with anthers pointing toward the sky," Poinar explains.<br /><br />"Despite being so small, the detail still remaining is amazing. Our specimen was probably part of a cluster on the plant that contained many similar flowers, some possibly female."<br /><br />The specimen in question was obtained from amber mines in Myanmar, having been preserved in marine sedimentary deposits dating back to the mid-Cretaceous, approximately 99 million years ago.<br /><br />According to the researchers, V. pleristaminis, an example of an angiosperm (flowering plant), likely belongs to the order Laurales, particularly bearing some resemblance to the families Monimiaceae and Atherospermataceae.<br /><br />But this strange, extinct flower doesn't just offer clues about the history of floral evolution.<br /><br />According to Poinar Jr., V. pleristaminis and other Burmese amber angiosperm fossils like it may also help to solve an outstanding mystery about the ancient supercontinent Gondwana from which these plants first arose.<br /><br />Specifically, V. pleristaminis would have once blossomed on a chunk of Gondwana called the West Burma Block, which broke off from the rest of the supercontinent at some unknown point in history.<br /><br />Quite when is a matter of some debate, with some geological hypotheses putting the date of separation as far back as 500 million years ago.<br /><br />Research by Poinar Jr. however suggests that the West Burma Block could not have rafted from Gondwana to Asia before the early Cretaceous, given angiosperms only evolved and diversified about 100 million years ago.<br /><br />The debate isn't likely to be over any time soon, but V. pleristaminis and its amber-coated ilk provide a fresh line of thinking on the matter – a budding secret waiting to be told for almost 100 million years.<br /><br />"The dating of [the West Burma Block] tectonic migration from Gondwana is not yet firmly established, but the 100 Ma age of the amber, with its included Southern Hemisphere-related plant and animal fossils, may factor into an eventual solution to this problem," the researchers write. <p></p><p><br /></p><p><u><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://journals.brit.org/jbrit/article/view/1014" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://oregonstate.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Oregon State University.</a></span></i></u><br /></p>

99-Million-Year-Old Fossil Flower Found Encased in Burmese Amber

99-Million-Year-Old Fossil Flower Found Encased in Burmese Amber. Valviloculus pleristaminis, flower in lateral view. Image credit: Poinar, ...

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Slow Start of Plate Tectonics Despite a Hot Early Earth

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9-ug-MZQ7b4/X-Sylj5_e-I/AAAAAAAASuE/hATjGv4uxfQJgiVJ7ZlbYXpEKIbjIbjVQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/ca_0101NID_Mid_Atlantic_Ridge_online%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9-ug-MZQ7b4/X-Sylj5_e-I/AAAAAAAASuE/hATjGv4uxfQJgiVJ7ZlbYXpEKIbjIbjVQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/ca_0101NID_Mid_Atlantic_Ridge_online%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="Slow Start of Plate Tectonics Despite a Hot Early Earth" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The extrusion of fresh ocean crust at midocean ridges began to slacken 15 million years ago, perhaps cooling the planet. GEOGPHOTOS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <p>Writing in PNAS, scientists from Cologne university present important new constraints showing that plate tectonics started relatively slow, although the early Earth's interior was much hotter than today.</p><p>In seafloor trenches around the world, slabs of old ocean crust fall in slow motion into the mantle, while fresh slabs are built at midocean ridges, where magma emerges at the seams between separating tectonic plates. The engine is relentless—but maybe not so steady: Beginning about 15 million years ago, in the late Miocene epoch, ocean crust production declined by one-third over 10 million years to a slow pace that pretty much continues to today, says Colleen Dalton, a geophysicist at Brown University who presented the work this month at a virtual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. “It’s a global phenomenon.”<br /><br />In an international collaboration earth scientists at the University of Cologne discovered that during Earth's early history mantle convection on, i.e. the internal mixing of our planet, was surprisingly slow and spatially restricted. This finding is unexpected because our planet was much hotter during the first hundreds of million years after its formation. </p><p>Therefore, it has been assumed that mantle convection on Earth was much faster in its infancy. According to their study "Convective isolation of Hadean mantle reservoirs through Archean time," however, the earth did not experience full speed mantle convection until 3 billion years ago, when modern plate tectonics is believed to have fully operated.<br /><br />For their study, the geologists investigated up to 3.5 billion years old igneous rocks from NW Australia that cover 800 million years of Earths early history. The analysis of these rock successions revealed that the oldest samples exhibit small anomalies in the isotope abundances of the element tungsten (W) that progressively diminish with time. </p><p>The origin of these anomalies, namely the relative abundance of 182W, relates to ancient heterogeneities in the terrestrial mantle that must have formed immediately after formation of the Earth more than 4.5 billion years ago. The preservation of these 182W anomalies in the igneous rocks from NW Australia demonstrate that pristine mantle reservoirs from the beginning of our planet were conserved over timescales exceeding more than one billion years.<br /><br />This finding is very surprising, because higher mantle temperatures in the early Earth suggest that mantle convection was more extensive and much faster than today. Interestingly, the observed 182W anomalies start to diminish at around 3 billion years ago, within a geological era that is assumed to mark the beginning of modern plate tectonics. The onset of modern plate tectonics, involving subduction processes and mountain uplift, has been shown to be a key event triggering the emergence of large continental masses and an oxygen-rich atmosphere, all of which set the stage for the origin of more complex life. </p><p> </p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><i><u>The above story is based on <a href="https://portal.uni-koeln.de/en/universitaet/aktuell/press-releases/single-news/slow-start-of-plate-tectonics-despite-a-hot-early-earth" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.uni-koeln.de/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of Cologne</a>.</u></i></span>

Slow Start of Plate Tectonics Despite a Hot Early Earth

The extrusion of fresh ocean crust at midocean ridges began to slacken 15 million years ago, perhaps cooling the planet. GEOGPHOTOS/ALAMY ST...

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Kilauea Volcano Erupts on Hawaii's Big Island

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rPZpqpnYV5M/X-C7PI7ZKII/AAAAAAAASto/kJRo5xgACYk4Dip63f1A-7FKYWKLBQNzgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Hawaii%2527s%2BK%25C4%25ABlauea%2BVolcano%2BErupts%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rPZpqpnYV5M/X-C7PI7ZKII/AAAAAAAASto/kJRo5xgACYk4Dip63f1A-7FKYWKLBQNzgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h320/Hawaii%2527s%2BK%25C4%25ABlauea%2BVolcano%2BErupts%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="Hawaii's Kīlauea Volcano Erupts" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An eruption started at Kīlauea summit on Dec. 20<br />Photo: USGS</td></tr></tbody></table> <p>In Hawaii, this cursed year is going out with even more horror. The volcano Kīlauea on the state’s Big Island erupted Sunday night.<br /><br />In a statement at 9:30 that evening local time, the United States Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said “an eruption has commenced” within the volcano’s summit caldera. It began with a “glow within Halemaʻumaʻu crater,” but soon, the bright orange brilliance grew and was coupled with thick plumes of rising dark ash and smoke.<br /><br />Lava boiled off the water lake that has sat inside Halemaʻumaʻu crater since the 2018 eruption. USGS found that the lava that replaced filled the crater to a depth of 32 feet (10 meters) in just two hours. It also sent a lava fountain shooting roughly 165 feet (50 meters) into the air.<br /></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />An hour after the eruption began, an earthquake rocked the island. USGS sensors put it at a magnitude of 4.4 on the Richter scale, which sent shakes across the Big Island. At least seven small earthquakes preceded the eruption, measuring between magnitude 2.5 to 2.7, sending a warning to officials something was afoot.<br /><br />Hawaii county’s Civil Defense Agency has ordered all residents to stay inside their homes to avoid exposure to ash, which can irritate eyes and lungs. The National Weather service expects the southwest part of the Big Island will see ash fall, with the greatest risk in the communities of Pahala, Wood Valley, Naalehu, and Ocean View. For now, the lava remains contained in the crater, though, so at least there’s that.<br /><p></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en">Video from W rim of the caldera just before midnight. As of December 21 at 1:30 a.m. HST, the growing lava lake has almost reached the level of the lowest down-dropped block that formed during the 2018 collapse events. Over the past 2 hours, the lake has risen by ~10 m (32 ft). <a href="https://t.co/Qbx1d6hbq4">pic.twitter.com/Qbx1d6hbq4</a></p>— USGS Volcanoes🌋 (@USGSVolcanoes) <a href="https://twitter.com/USGSVolcanoes/status/1340989228470030337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 21, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script> <br />The volcano last erupted in 2018, when it not only spewed lava and hot ash but also huge ballistic rocks and freaky blue flames while creating its own weather. That eruption lasted for weeks, and buried large portions of neighborhoods such as Leilani Estates in the volcano’s East Rift Zone where the eruption was centered. Lava even reached the ocean, reshaping the contours of the island.<br /><br />Since that 2018 terror, Kīlauea has seen regular small earthquakes beneath its caldera and upper rift zone, probably caused by the intrusion of magma. In recent months, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said those earthquakes began taking place more frequently. It’s unclear if the current eruption will follow the same course as the 2018 one.<br /><br />You can watch a livestream of the eruption <a href="https://www.nps.gov/media/webcam/view.htm?id=5B6292AF-D3C2-CF49-C128FA9697DF00B6" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. <br /><p></p>

Kilauea Volcano Erupts on Hawaii's Big Island

An eruption started at Kīlauea summit on Dec. 20 Photo: USGS   In Hawaii, this cursed year is going out with even more horror. The volcano K...

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World's Oldest Python Fossil Unearthed

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w271yN_8GLc/X94iqXJJLOI/AAAAAAAAStc/Nzyn5HkS4DkxlIM6KkRiTMwuqWiAJ5b-wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1366/World%2527s%2Boldest%2Bpython%2Bfossil%2Bunearthed%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="World's Oldest Python Fossil Unearthed" border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1366" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w271yN_8GLc/X94iqXJJLOI/AAAAAAAAStc/Nzyn5HkS4DkxlIM6KkRiTMwuqWiAJ5b-wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/World%2527s%2Boldest%2Bpython%2Bfossil%2Bunearthed%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="World's Oldest Python Fossil Unearthed" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">World's Oldest Python Fossil Unearthed. The first discovered fossil belonging to the newfound species Messelopython freyi. (Image credit: Copyright Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung)<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;">Palaeontologists have named the world's oldest-known species of python after uncovering well-preserved 47-million-year-old fossils in germany.</span><br /><br /><p></p><p>Together with his colleague Hussam Zaher of the University in São Paulo, Senckenberg scientist Krister Smith described the world's oldest known fossils of a python. The almost completely preserved snakes with a length around one meter were discovered in the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Messel Pit" and are about 47 million years old. </p><p> The new python species, <i>Messelopython freyi</i>, was named in honor of paleontologist Eberhard "Dino" Frey of the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe. The study was published today in the scientific journal Biology Letters.<br /><br />Reaching a length of more than six meters, pythons are among the world's largest snakes. Today, various species of these constrictors are found primarily in Africa, Southern and Southeast Asia, and Australia. "The geographic origin of pythons is still not clear. The discovery of a new python species in the Messel Pit is therefore a major leap forward in understanding these snakes' evolutionary history," explains Dr. Krister Smith of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt.<br /><br />The new python species Messelopython freyi described by Smith and his Brazilian colleague, Dr. Hussam Zaher, is the oldest known fossil record of a python anywhere in the world. "According to our findings, these snakes already occurred in Europe at the time of the Eocene, over 47 million years ago. Our analyses trace their evolutionary history to Europe!" adds Zaher.<br /><br />However, the large constrictor snakes subsequently disappeared from the European continent for quite some time. Fossils of this snake family did not appear again until the Miocene—between 23 and 5 million years ago. "As the global climate began to cool again after the Miocene, the pythons once again disappeared from Europe," says Smith.<br /><br />Contrary to the primeval python from Messel, modern pythons live in complete spatial separation from their anatomically very similar relatives, the boas. "However, in Messel, both Messelopython freyi as well as primitive boas such as Eoconstrictor fischeri lived together in the same ecosystem—we therefore have to revisit the thesis that these two groups of snakes competed with each other, making them unable to share the same habitats," explains Smith.<br /><br />The snake's scientific name is a combination of the locality where it was found and the snake's family. The specific epithet of the newly discovered fossil is owed to Prof. Dr. Eberhard Frey of the State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe. "Eberhard Frey bears the nickname "Dino' for a good reason—he is world-renowned for his exacting studies of fossil reptiles. By naming a new species after him, we wanted to honor his accomplishments in the field of paleontology," adds Smith to explain the fossil's naming.</p><p> </p><p><u><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0735" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://www.senckenberg.de/en/institutes/senckenberg-research-institute-natural-history-museum-frankfurt/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum. </a></span></i></u><br /></p>

World's Oldest Python Fossil Unearthed

World's Oldest Python Fossil Unearthed. The first discovered fossil belonging to the newfound species Messelopython freyi. (Image credit...

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Crystal Zoning

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vsoYJuftLCo/X9Y1UTuwuZI/AAAAAAAASsM/OAMZB2Am4tk3ktAwTcn3NbqoWpemi6lYQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1456/Beautiful%2BZoning%2BPurple%2BFluorite%2BCrystals%2Bfrom%2BMinerva%2BMine%252C%2BHardin%2BCo.%252C%2BIllinois%252C%2BUSA.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Crystal Zoning" border="0" data-original-height="1153" data-original-width="1456" height="506" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vsoYJuftLCo/X9Y1UTuwuZI/AAAAAAAASsM/OAMZB2Am4tk3ktAwTcn3NbqoWpemi6lYQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h506/Beautiful%2BZoning%2BPurple%2BFluorite%2BCrystals%2Bfrom%2BMinerva%2BMine%252C%2BHardin%2BCo.%252C%2BIllinois%252C%2BUSA.jpg" title="Crystal Zoning" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crystal Zoning. Beautiful Zoning Purple Fluorite Crystals from Minerva Mine, Hardin Co., Illinois, USA<br />Photo credit: Anton Watzl<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /><p></p><p>Crystal zoning is a texture developed in solid-solution minerals and characterized optically by changes in the color or extinction angle of the mineral from the core to the rim.</p><p>Crystal zoning A texture developed in solid-solution minerals and characterized optically by changes in the colour or extinction angle of the mineral from the core to the rim. This optical zoning is a reflection of chemical zoning in the mineral. <br /><br />For example, a plagioclase can be zoned from a Ca-rich core to an Na-rich rim. Zoning results from the mineral's inability to maintain chemical equilibrium with a magma during rapid cooling; the zonation represents a frozen picture of the continuous reaction series for that mineral.</p><p></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Zoning can be of three types, the first two applying mostly to plagioclase feldspars. </b></span><p></p><p><b>(a)</b> Normal zoning is where the mineral is zoned from a high-temperature core composition to a low-temperature rim composition. </p><p><b>(b)</b> Reverse zoning is where a mineral is zoned from a low-temperature core composition to a high-temperature rim composition. </p><p><b>(c)</b> Oscillatory zoning is where the mineral chemistry continuously oscillates between high- and low-temperature compositions going from the core to the rim.  </p><p>The salt deposits of a salt pan are zoned like bathtub rings, with less-soluble sulfates and carbonates at the outer margin and highly soluble sodium chloride (table salt) at the centre. The crystallization of these salts can be compared with the evaporation of brine in a dish.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Various examples of growth zoning features typically found in hydrothermal fluorites <br /></h4><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MDqfNYFJgQk/X9Yz-F5hlHI/AAAAAAAASsA/Kk7yhqYeEOk7sMxuw8LB1t0mik8ocmvEQCLcBGAsYHQ/s850/Various-examples-of-growth-zoning-features-typically-found-in-hydrothermal-fluorites-as%2B%25281%2529%2B%25281%2529.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Crystal Zoning" border="0" data-original-height="510" data-original-width="850" height="384" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MDqfNYFJgQk/X9Yz-F5hlHI/AAAAAAAASsA/Kk7yhqYeEOk7sMxuw8LB1t0mik8ocmvEQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h384/Various-examples-of-growth-zoning-features-typically-found-in-hydrothermal-fluorites-as%2B%25281%2529%2B%25281%2529.png" title="Crystal Zoning" width="640" /></a></div><p> </p><p>No apparent zoning (A) suggests crystallization under constant hydrothermal conditions, whereas concentric zoning (B) indicates discontinuous changes in the fluid chemistry over time; (C) is a typical representation of short-lived oscillating changes in the fluid chemistry. (D,E) Typical sectoral zoning in fluorite crystals with complex crystal habits ((D): cuboctahedral, (E): cubic + rhombic dodecahedral faces) that is only visible in specific plane sections. (F) Combination of sectoral and oscillatory zoning in a cubic fluorite crystal. (G) 'Fir-tree' zoning occurs when growth conditions (T/Eh) alternate over time and thereby favour different crystal morphologies (cuboctahedron ↔ cube), which proves pulsed crystallization (e.g., [106]). (H) 'Petal-type' zoning is the result of a continuous change from octahedral growth to cubic growth; the red line marks the beginning of shape transition (modified from [104]). <br /><br /></p>

Crystal Zoning

Crystal Zoning. Beautiful Zoning Purple Fluorite Crystals from Minerva Mine, Hardin Co., Illinois, USA Photo credit: Anton Watzl   Crystal z...

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Five-Eyed 520-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Arthropod Origin

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6CC7QJxGki0/YS-dlSDl0MI/AAAAAAAATTU/7_jp6aTv2AUdWd_iS_UQ-FydeF3g4KT_ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1234/Five-Eyed%2B520-Million-Year-Old%2BFossil%2BReveals%2BArthropod%2BOrigin%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1234" height="346" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6CC7QJxGki0/YS-dlSDl0MI/AAAAAAAATTU/7_jp6aTv2AUdWd_iS_UQ-FydeF3g4KT_ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h346/Five-Eyed%2B520-Million-Year-Old%2BFossil%2BReveals%2BArthropod%2BOrigin%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="Five-Eyed 520-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Arthropod Origin" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fossil specimen of Kylinxia, holotype. Credit: ZENG Han</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>The arthropods have been among the most successful animals on Earth since the Cambrian Period, about 520 million years ago. They are the most familiar and ubiquitous, and constitute nearly 80 percent of all animal species today, far more than any other animals.<br /><br />But how did arthropods evolve and what did their ancestors look like? These have been a major conundrum in animal evolution puzzling generations of scientists for more than a century.<br /><br />Now researchers from the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NIGPAS) have discovered a shrimp-like fossil with five eyes, which has provided important insights into the early evolutionary history of arthropods. The study was published in Nature.<br /><br />The fossil species, Kylinxia, was collected from the Chengjiang fauna in southwest China’s Yunnan Province. The fauna documents the most complete early animal fossils in the Cambrian time.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto"> <script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block; text-align:center;" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-slot="6157425841"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />Prof. HUANG Diying, corresponding author for the study from NIGPAS, said, “Kylinxia is a very rare chimeric species. It combines morphological features from different animals, which is analogous to ‘kylin,’ a chimeric creature in traditional Chinese mythology.”<br /><br />“Owing to very special taphonomic conditions, the Kylinxia fossils exhibit exquisite anatomical structures. For example, nervous tissue, eyes and digestive system — these are soft body parts we usually cannot see in conventional fossils,” said Prof. ZHAO Fangchen, co-corresponding author of the study.<br /><br />Kylinxia shows distinctive features of true arthropods, such as a hardened cuticle, a segmented trunk and jointed legs. However, it also integrates the morphological characteristics present in very ancestral forms, including the bizarre five eyes of <i>Opabinia</i>, known as the Cambrian “weird wonder,” as well as the iconic raptorial appendages of <i>Anomalocaris</i>, the giant apex predator in the Cambrian ocean.<br /><br />Among the Chengjiang fauna, Anomalocaris is a top predator that can reach two meters in body length, and has been regarded as an ancestral form of arthropod. But huge morphological differences exist between Anomalocaris and true arthropods. There is a great evolutionary gap between the two that can hardly be bridged. This gap has become a crucial “missing link” in the origin of arthropods.<br /><br />The research team conducted detailed anatomical examinations of the fossils of <i>Kylinxia</i>. They demonstrated that the first appendages in Anomalocaris and true arthropods were homologous. The phylogenetic analyses suggested that there was affinity between the front appendages of <i>Kylinxia</i>, small predatory appendages in front of the mouth of Chelicerata (a group that includes spiders and scorpions) and the antennae of Mandibulata (a subdivision of arthropods including insects such as ants and bees).<br /><br />“Our results indicate that the evolutionary placement of <i>Kylinxia </i>is right between Anomalocaris and the true arthropods. Therefore, our finding reached the evolutionary root of the true arthropods,” said Prof. ZHU Maoyan, a co-author of the study.<br /><br />“<i>Kylinxia </i>represents a crucial transitional fossil predicted by Darwin’s evolutionary theory. It bridges the evolutionary gap from Anomalocaris to true arthropods and forms a key “missing link” in the origin of arthropods, contributing strong fossil evidence for the evolutionary theory of life,” said Dr. ZENG Han, first author of the study. </p><p><br /></p><p><i><u>The above story is based on <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2883-7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://english.cas.cn/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Chinese Academy of Sciences.</a></u></i><br /></p>

Five-Eyed 520-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals Arthropod Origin

Fossil specimen of Kylinxia, holotype. Credit: ZENG Han The arthropods have been among the most successful animals on Earth since the Cambri...

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Scientists Solve the Molecular Puzzle of 'Flammable Ice'

<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a9vhgetIC9E/YKvAgrNxZFI/AAAAAAAATCE/lQu0WzPji7IYYNIpsUMXzhS_h42l24jewCLcBGAsYHQ/s1452/9EA98360-F279-4082-B0DEFD442DF5774A_source%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1188" data-original-width="1452" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a9vhgetIC9E/YKvAgrNxZFI/AAAAAAAATCE/lQu0WzPji7IYYNIpsUMXzhS_h42l24jewCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/9EA98360-F279-4082-B0DEFD442DF5774A_source%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> <br /><p></p><p>There's a weird type of 'ice' found in the ocean that burns when exposed to a flame - and scientists think they've finally solved the mystery of how this strange substance forms under the sea.<br /><br />Gas hydrates, also known as 'flammable ice', are formed as gas gets trapped in lattices of water molecules - and it really does look a lot like strange, pockmarked ice.<br /><br />This flammable ice is widely found inside minerals packed into clay-rich ocean sediments. The things is, the saltiness and pore size inside those minerals shouldn't be conducive to the formation of gas hydrates - and that's been puzzling experts until now.<br /><br />Two researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have used a complex experimental electrical field setup to examine how water and clay interact, and how gas hydrates could start to form in those ocean sediments.<br /><br />"Through this research, we gained better insight into the origin of gas hydrates occurrence in clay-rich sedimentary deposits," says one of the researchers, Tae-Hyuk Kwon.<br /><br />"In the near future, we will soon be able to commercially produce methane gas from natural gas hydrate deposits."<br /><br />The scientists found that the negatively charged surfaces of clay materials were crucial in causing this flammable ice to form. The energy seems to partially break the hydrogen-bonded water clusters, lowering the thermal energy of the water molecules.<br /><br />Part of the reason scientists have been so keen to solve this mystery is that gas hydrates are seen as a viable alternative energy source – last year a team in China managed to extract natural gas from underwater flammable ice for the first time.<br /><br />If the technique can be perfected and commercialised, we could be looking at an abundant new source for gas energy. Reserves could be greater than all other fossil fuels combined, according to estimates.<br /><br />Because flammable ice relies on such a precise combination of temperature and pressure, trying to keep the substance stable enough to successfully extract is quite a challenge: but research like this latest study should help with that.<br /><br />The new findings will also prove useful as engineers try and deal with the problem of hydrates clogging up drilling pipes.<br /><br />Future research building on this study will need to examine the optimum conditions for the formation of gas hydrates, particularly in terms of the water molecule polarisation strength at different distances from the clay sediment.<br /><br />However, we now know far more than we did before about how this amazing substance comes into being.<br /><br />"An understanding of the association between gas hydrates and clay minerals is required as it is expected to play a significant role in the exploitation of methane production from hydrate deposits and CO₂ storage in oceanic sediments," conclude the researchers. </p><br /><br /><i><u>The findings were published online in the journal <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.7b05477" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Environmental Science and Technology</a>.</u></i>

Scientists Solve the Molecular Puzzle of 'Flammable Ice'

  There's a weird type of 'ice' found in the ocean that burns when exposed to a flame - and scientists think they've finally...

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Hot Rock Rising Beneath Central Greenland Is Melting the Ice From Below

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zu92AY07i2s/X8-TjhCaIII/AAAAAAAASrc/HTHdc7V4s0YuzgKWH-878IRWnEBHaTFXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1332/Hot%2BRock%2BRising%2BBeneath%2BCentral%2BGreenland%2BIs%2BMelting%2Bthe%2BIce%2BFrom%2BBelow.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Hot Rock Rising Beneath Central Greenland Is Melting the Ice From Below" border="0" data-original-height="590" data-original-width="1332" height="284" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zu92AY07i2s/X8-TjhCaIII/AAAAAAAASrc/HTHdc7V4s0YuzgKWH-878IRWnEBHaTFXQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h284/Hot%2BRock%2BRising%2BBeneath%2BCentral%2BGreenland%2BIs%2BMelting%2Bthe%2BIce%2BFrom%2BBelow.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A schematic diagram showing the main tectonic features and mantle plumes beneath Greenland and the surrounding regions. Vp = P wave velocity; MAR = the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; MTZ = the mantle transition zone (410-660 km depths); CMB = the core-mantle boundary at 2889 km depth. ©Tohoku University<br /></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /><p></p><p> </p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Melting of ice in central Greenland is being accelerated by the heat of molten rocks rising from the core–mantle boundary, adding to sea-level rise, a study has found.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Researchers from Japan mapped out the extent and branches of the so-called 'Greenland plume' — the rising flow of molten rock ascending beneath the island.<br /><br />Geothermal activity is abundant in the North Atlantic region. Iceland and the Norwegian island of Jan Mayen have active volcanoes with their own mantle plumes. </span><br /></p><p>A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.<br /><br />"Knowledge about the Greenland plume will bolster our understanding of volcanic activities in these regions and the problematic issue of global sea-level rising caused by the melting of the Greenland ice sheet," said Dr. Genti Toyokuni, co-author of the studies.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto"> <script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block; text-align:center;" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-slot="6157425841"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />The North Atlantic region is awash with geothermal activity. Iceland and Jan Mayen contain active volcanoes with their own distinct mantle plumes, whilst Svalbard -- a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean -- is a geothermal area. However, the origin of these activities and their interconnectedness has largely been unexplored.<br /><br />The research team discovered that the Greenland plume rose from the core-mantle boundary to the mantle transition zone beneath Greenland. The plume also has two branches in the lower mantle that feed into other plumes in the region, supplying heat to active regions in Iceland and Jan Mayen and the geothermal area in Svalbard.<br /><br />Their findings were based on measurements of the 3-D seismic velocity structure of the crust and whole mantle beneath these regions. To obtain the measurements, they used seismic topography. Numerous seismic wave arrival times were inverted to obtain 3-D images of the underground structure. The method works similarly to a CT scan of the human body.<br /><br />Toyokuni was able to utilize seismographs he installed on the Greenland ice sheet as part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Monitoring Network. Set up in 2009, the project sees the collaboration of researchers from 11 countries. The US-Japan joint team is primarily responsible for the construction and maintenance of the three seismic stations on the ice sheet.<br /><br />Looking ahead, Toyokuni hopes to explore the thermal process in more detail. "This study revealed the larger picture, so examining the plumes at a more localized level will reveal more information."<br /><br /> </p><u><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://www.tohoku.ac.jp/en/press/greenland_plume_drive_thermal_activities.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.tohoku.ac.jp/en/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Tohoku University</a>. </span></i></u>

Hot Rock Rising Beneath Central Greenland Is Melting the Ice From Below

A schematic diagram showing the main tectonic features and mantle plumes beneath Greenland and the surrounding regions. Vp = P wave velocity...

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Alaska Islands May Be Part of a Single, Massive Volcano

<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3xvwtzhnz8/X8zuy-ajrtI/AAAAAAAASrM/XEPtvYEIHjU6VjebcKFQujh_fi_pgTlTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1253/IFMAleutian_Calderas-scaled%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="615" data-original-width="1253" height="314" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-P3xvwtzhnz8/X8zuy-ajrtI/AAAAAAAASrM/XEPtvYEIHjU6VjebcKFQujh_fi_pgTlTQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h314/IFMAleutian_Calderas-scaled%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Location map of the Islands of Four Mountains in the Aleutian arc. This also shows the position and approximate areas of known calderas along the arc.<br />Credit: John Power/USGS.</td></tr></tbody></table> <br /></p><p>A trail of volcanic islands off the coast of southern Alaska may actually be part of a single giant caldera, according to evidence being presented next week at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting. If so, it’s possible the newly revealed volcanic giant once erupted in a blast large enough to dwarf the cataclysmic 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.<br /></p><p>A small group of volcanic islands in Alaska’s Aleutian chain might be part of a single, undiscovered giant volcano, say scientists presenting the findings at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2020. If the researchers’ suspicions are correct, the newfound volcanic caldera would belong to the same category of volcanoes as the Yellowstone Caldera and other volcanoes that have had super-eruptions with severe global consequences.<br /><br />The Islands of the Four Mountains in the central Aleutians is a tight group of six stratovolcanoes named Carlisle, Cleveland, Herbert, Kagamil, Tana and Uliaga. Stratovolcanoes are what most people envision when they think of a volcano: a steep conical mountain with a banner of clouds and ash waving at the summit. They can have powerful eruptions, like that of Mount St. Helens in 1980, but these are dwarfed by far less frequent caldera-forming eruptions.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto"> <script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block; text-align:center;" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-slot="6157425841"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />Researchers from a variety of institutions and disciplines have been studying Mount Cleveland, the most active volcano of the group, trying to understand the nature of the Islands of the Four Mountains. They have gathered multiple pieces of evidence showing that the islands could belong to one interconnected caldera.<br /><br />Unlike stratovolcanoes, which tend to tap small- to modestly-sized reservoirs of magma, a caldera is created by tapping a huge reservoir in the Earth’s crust. When the reservoir’s pressure exceeds the strength of the crust, gigantic amounts of lava and ash are released in a catastrophic episode of eruption.<br /><br />Caldera-forming eruptions are the most explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth and they often have had global effects. The ash and gas they put into the atmosphere can affect Earth’s climate and trigger social upheaval. For example, the eruption of nearby Okmok volcano in the year BCE 43 has been recently implicated in the disruption of the Roman Republic. The proposed caldera underlying the Islands of the Four Mountains would be even larger than Okmok. If confirmed, it would become the first in the Aleutians that is hidden underwater, said Diana Roman of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C., co-author of the study.<br /><br />“We’ve been scraping under the couch cushions for data,” said Roman, referring to the difficulty of studying such a remote place. “But everything we look at lines up with a caldera in this region.”<br /><br />Despite all these signs, Roman along with John Power, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the study’s lead author, maintain that the existence of the caldera is not by any means proven. To do that the study team will need to return to the islands and gather more direct evidence to fully test their hypothesis.<br /><br />“Our hope is to return to the Islands of Four Mountains and look more closely at the seafloor, study the volcanic rocks in greater detail, collect more seismic and gravity data, and sample many more of the geothermal areas,” Roman said.<br /><br />The caldera hypothesis might also help explain the frequent explosive activity seen at Mount Cleveland, Roman said. Mount Cleveland is arguably the most active volcano in  North America for at least the last 20 years. It has produced ash clouds as high as 15,000 and 30,000 feet above sea level. These eruptions pose hazards to aircraft traveling the busy air routes between North America and Asia.<br /><br />“It does potentially help us understand what makes Cleveland so active,” said Power, who will present the work. “It can also help us understand what type of eruptions to expect in the future and better prepare for their hazards.”</p><p> </p><p><u><i> The above story is based on <a href="https://news.agu.org/press-release/cluster-of-alaskan-islands-could-be-single-interconnected-giant-volcano/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://www.agu.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">American Geophysical Union.</a></i></u><br /></p>

Alaska Islands May Be Part of a Single, Massive Volcano

Location map of the Islands of Four Mountains in the Aleutian arc. This also shows the position and approximate areas of known calderas alon...

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99-Million-Year-Old Amphibian With Slingshot-style Tongue Found

<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A2f8nohPy0Y/X8O5yZaM1aI/AAAAAAAASq4/Oyou0ZScf2g1s2BAbcU2gtmQhwgmjlL-ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/fossil-in-amber-dinosaurs%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A2f8nohPy0Y/X8O5yZaM1aI/AAAAAAAASq4/Oyou0ZScf2g1s2BAbcU2gtmQhwgmjlL-ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/fossil-in-amber-dinosaurs%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The skull encased in amber. Image credits Florida Museum / Edward Stanley.<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Fossils of bizarre, armored amphibians known as albanerpetontids provide the oldest evidence of a slingshot-style tongue, a new Science study shows.<br /><br />Despite having lizardlike claws, scales and tails, albanerpetontids -- mercifully called "albies" for short -- were amphibians, not reptiles. Their lineage was distinct from today's frogs, salamanders and caecilians and dates back at least 165 million years, dying out only about 2 million years ago.<br /><br />Now, a set of 99-million-year-old fossils redefines these tiny animals as sit-and-wait predators that snatched prey with a projectile firing of their tongue -- and not underground burrowers, as once thought. The fossils, one previously misidentified as an early chameleon, are the first albies discovered in modern-day Myanmar and the only known examples in amber.<br /><br />They also represent a new genus and species: Yaksha perettii, named after treasure-guarding spirits known as yakshas in Hindu literature and Adolf Peretti, the discoverer of two of the fossils.<br /><br />"This discovery adds a super-cool piece to the puzzle of this obscure group of weird little animals," said study co-author Edward Stanley, director of the Florida Museum of Natural History's Digital Discovery and Dissemination Laboratory. "Knowing they had this ballistic tongue gives us a whole new understanding of this entire lineage."<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">A fortunate mistake</h4><p style="text-align: left;">The discovery began with a bumble.<br /><br />In 2016, Stanley and Juan Diego Daza, lead author of the Science study and assistant professor of biological sciences at Sam Houston State University, published a paper presenting a dozen rare amber fossil lizards -- or so they thought. One juvenile specimen possessed a hodgepodge of bewildering characteristics, including a specialized tongue bone. After much debate and consultation with colleagues, the scientists finally labelled it an ancient chameleon, about 99 million years old, an estimate based on radiometric dating of crystals at the site where the fossil was found.<br /><br />When she read the study, Susan Evans, professor of vertebrate morphology and paleontology at University College London and an albie expert, instantly recognized the puzzling specimen. It was no chameleon. She emailed Daza.<br /><br />"I remember that as one of the worst days of my life," he said.<br /><br />But the paper also attracted the attention of an unexpected collaborator: Peretti, a gemologist who contacted Daza about another collection of amber fossil lizards from the same region of Myanmar. </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />Per Daza's recommendation, Peretti sent the collection to the University of Texas at Austin for CT scanning, a way of clarifying what lies inside. As Daza began cleaning up the scans, one fossil in particular caught his eye -- the complete skull of an adult albie.<br /><br />Most fossil albies are crushed flat or a jumble of bones in disarray. In 1995, Evans published the first description of a complete specimen, excavated in Spain, but "it was very much roadkill," she said. Even amber fossils suffer degradation, and soft tissues can mineralize, becoming difficult to work with.<br /><br />This specimen, however, was not only three-dimensional, "it was in mint condition," Stanley said. "Everything was where it was supposed to be. There was even some soft tissue," including the tongue pad and parts of the jaw muscles and eyelids.<br /><br />It was also the adult counterpart to the juvenile albie that had been mistaken for a chameleon.<br /><br />When Daza sent the scan to Evans, she was dazzled by its rich detail.<br /><br />"All my Christmases have come at once!" she wrote back.<br /><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">'Weird and wonderful'</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Once classified as salamanders, albies' stippled, reinforced skulls led many scientists to hypothesize they were diggers. No one imagined them as having chameleonlike lifestyles, Stanley said. But, he added, "if you're going to misidentify an albie as any kind of lizard, a chameleon is absolutely what you would land on."<br /><br />Even though one is an amphibian and the other a reptile, they share several features, including claws, scales, massive eye sockets and -- we now know -- a projectile feeding mechanism.<br /><br />The chameleon tongue is one of the fastest muscles in the animal kingdom and can rocket from 0 to 60 mph in a hundredth of a second in some species. It gets its speed from a specialized accelerator muscle that stores energy by contracting and then launching the elastic tongue with a recoil effect. If the earliest albies also had ballistic tongues, the feature is much older than the first chameleons, which may have appeared 120 million years ago. Fossil evidence indicates albies are at least 165 million years old, though Evans said their lineage must be much more ancient, originating more than 250 million years ago.<br /><br />While armed with a rapid-fire tongue, Y. perettii was tiny: Based on the fossil skull, Daza estimates the adult was about 2 inches long, not including the tail. The juvenile was a quarter that size.<br /><br />"We envision this as a stocky little thing scampering in the leaf litter, well hidden, but occasionally coming out for a fly, throwing out its tongue and grabbing it," Evans said.<br /><br />The revelation that albies had projectile tongues helps explain some of their "weird and wonderful" features, such as unusual jaw and neck joints and large, forward-looking eyes, a common characteristic of predators, she said. They may also have breathed through their skin, as salamanders do.<br /><br />Even though the specimens are remarkably preserved, Stanley said CT scanning was essential to the analysis, revealing fine-scale features obscured in the cloudy amber.<br /><br />"They only come to life with CT scanning," he said. "Digital technology is really key with this amber material."<br /><br />Digitization also enabled the researchers, scattered around the world and hunkered down during COVID-19 quarantines, to collaboratively analyze and describe the specimens -- and then make the same material digitally available to others.<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">How are albanerpetontids related to other amphibians?</h4><p style="text-align: left;">Despite the level of preservation and completeness of the Y. perettii specimens, albies' exact place in the amphibian family tree remains a mystery. The researchers coded the specimens' physical characteristics and ran them through four models of amphibian relationships with no clear results. The animals' unusual combination of features is likely to blame, Evans said.<br /><br />"In theory, albies could give us a clue as to what the ancestors of modern amphibians looked like," she said. "Unfortunately, they're so specialized and so weird in their own way that they're not helping us all that much."<br /><br />But Y. perettii does put albies on a new part of the map. Northwest Myanmar was likely an island 99 million years ago and possibly a remnant from Gondwana, the ancient southern continental landmass. With two exceptions in Morocco, all other fossil albies have been found in North America, Europe and East Asia, which formerly formed a northern continental landmass. Daza said Y. perettii may have rafted to the island from mainland Asia or could represent a new southern record for the group.<br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">We just missed them</h4><p style="text-align: left;">With such a wide distribution, why did albies vanish into extinction while frogs, salamanders and caecilians still exist today?<br /><br />We don't know. Albies almost survived to the present, fading out about 2 million years ago, possibly late enough to have crossed paths with our earliest hominid relatives, Evans said.<br /><br />"We only just missed them. I keep hoping they're still alive somewhere." </p><i><u><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/earliest-rapid-fire-tongue-found-in-amphibians/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Florida Museum of Natural History</a>. Original written by Natalie van Hoose</span></u></i>

99-Million-Year-Old Amphibian With Slingshot-style Tongue Found

The skull encased in amber. Image credits Florida Museum / Edward Stanley. Fossils of bizarre, armored amphibians known as albanerpetontids ...

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Newly Discovered Volcanic Mineral Could Lead To More Efficient Batteries

<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C9YTnXz7Gac/X75x4hvFV8I/AAAAAAAASqY/x9l0mwjVlwUJ_F1yekIXODJ1VfCZPH-2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/Newly%2BDiscovered%2BVolcanic%2BMineral%2BCould%2BLead%2BTo%2BMore%2BEfficient%2BBatteries%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C9YTnXz7Gac/X75x4hvFV8I/AAAAAAAASqY/x9l0mwjVlwUJ_F1yekIXODJ1VfCZPH-2QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h426/Newly%2BDiscovered%2BVolcanic%2BMineral%2BCould%2BLead%2BTo%2BMore%2BEfficient%2BBatteries%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Petrovite, a new mineral described from Tolbachik Volcano in Siberia, could lead to the development of more efficient batteries. SPBU<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Volcanoes rank among the most destructive and awe-inspiring phenomena on the planet. But these fiery fissures do much more than just destroy. They also create.</span><br /><br /></p><p>The research team headed by Stanislav Filatov, Professor at the Department of Crystallography at St Petersburg University, has discovered a new mineral species in Kamchatka – petrovite. The scientists named the find in honour of Tomas Petrov, an outstanding crystallographer and Professor at St Petersburg University. He together with his students Arkady Glikin and Sergei Moshkin, was the first in the world to create a technology for growing jewellery malachite.<br /><br />For more than 40 years, Stanislav Filatov, Professor at St Petersburg University, together with colleagues from other research institutions in Russia, has been studying the mineralogy of scoria cones and lava flows of fumaroles in Kamchatka. </p><p>They were formed after two major eruptions of Tolbachik Volcano – in 1975-1976 and 2012-2013. This territory is unique in its mineralogical diversity. In recent years, researchers have discovered dozens of new minerals here, many of which are one-of-a-kind in the world.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto"> <script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block; text-align:center;" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-slot="6157425841"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />The recent find by the scientists from St Petersburg University, petrovite,<span style="font-family: georgia;"> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Na</span><sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">10</sub><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">CaCu</span><sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">2</sub><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">(SO</span><sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">4</sub><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; display: inline !important; float: none; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">)</span><sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; bottom: -0.25em; font-size: 10.5px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; position: relative; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">8</sub></span>, occurs as blue globular aggregates of tabular crystals with gaseous inclusions. ‘The copper atom in the crystal structure of petrovite has an unusual and very rare coordination of seven oxygen atoms. Such coordination is characteristic of only a couple of compounds, as well as of saranchinaite, which was discovered by our colleagues from St Petersburg University – the research team of Professor Oleg Siidra,’ said the project manager, Professor Stanislav Filatov.<br /><br />The mineral consists of oxygen atoms, sodium sulphur and copper, which form a porous framework. The voids are connected to each other by channels through which relatively small sodium atoms can move. The scientists have therefore established that the structural type of petrovite is promising for ionic conductivity and can be used as a cathode material for sodium ion batteries.<br /><br />‘At present, the biggest problem for this use is the small amount of a transition metal – copper – in the crystal structure of the mineral. It might be solved by synthesising a compound with the same structure as petrovite in the laboratory,’ said Stanislav Filatov.<br /><br />The study was conducted by a team of scientists from various research institutions from all over Russia. Mineralogical diagnostic assessment was carried out by Lidiya Vergasova, a senior research associate at the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is a great expert in the mineralogy of volcanic exhalations in Russia. Andrey Shablinskii, an associate of the Grebenshchikov Institute of Silicate Chemistry and a St Petersburg University graduate, studied the crystal structure of the new mineral type. </p><p>He described it together with Sergey Krivovichev, Professor at St Petersburg University, Head of the Kola Science Centre, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Additionally, Andrey Shablinskii carried out an X-ray phase analysis and, together with Stanislav Filatov, head of the research team, Professor at St Petersburg University, identified the optical constants of the mineral. The chemical composition of the mineral was determined by Svetlana Moskaleva, a research associate at the Institute of Volcanology and Seismology of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.<br /><br />Despite the fact that most of the recent discoveries of mineralogists and crystallographers of St Petersburg University are associated with the Kamchatka Peninsula, scientists discover many new minerals in the most unusual places. Among the finds in 2008–2017 there are samples from polar Yakutia, the Kola Peninsula (Kovdor deposit), Israel (the Negev Desert), Greece, Tanzania, South Africa, Jordan and many others. More information about these discoveries can be found at the virtual exhibition of the Mineralogical Museum of St Petersburg University on the IZI.Travel platform.<br /><br /></p><p> <br /><u><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://english.spbu.ru/news/4037-st-petersburg-university-scientists-discover-a-new-mineral-that-looks-promising-for-producing-batteries" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://english.spbu.ru/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Saint Petersburg State University.</a></span></i></u></p>

Newly Discovered Volcanic Mineral Could Lead To More Efficient Batteries

  Petrovite, a new mineral described from Tolbachik Volcano in Siberia, could lead to the development of more efficient batteries. SPBU  Vol...

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Researchers Discover 'Missing' Piece of Hawaii's Formation

<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Gc9TezAbV4/X70lHVy4g_I/AAAAAAAASqM/thizn1Y4AdMB-wWFbQ6-xLFwkfj-GzhOQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1260/Researchers%2BDiscover%2B%2527Missing%2527%2BPiece%2Bof%2BHawaii%2527s%2BFormation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Researchers Discover 'Missing' Piece of Hawaii's Formation" border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="1260" height="338" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Gc9TezAbV4/X70lHVy4g_I/AAAAAAAASqM/thizn1Y4AdMB-wWFbQ6-xLFwkfj-GzhOQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h338/Researchers%2BDiscover%2B%2527Missing%2527%2BPiece%2Bof%2BHawaii%2527s%2BFormation.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The journey of Hawaii's pancake from its creation at the mantle plume to where it slipped under the Pacific plate and sunk deep into the Earth's mantle. Credit: Michigan State University<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>An oceanic plateau has been observed for the first time in Earth’s lower mantle, 800 kilometers deep underneath Eastern Siberia, pushing Hawaii’s birthplace back to 100 million years, says a Michigan State University geophysicist.<br /><br />The discovery came when Songqiao “Shawn” Wei, an Endowed Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences in MSU’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, noticed something unusual in his data using groundbreaking techniques. Wei’s research will be published the journal Science.<br /><br />Earth’s mantle is mostly solid, but at a mid-ocean ridge it melts creating new oceanic crust between two tectonic plates such as the Pacific Plate. Typically, this new Pacific Ocean crust has a uniform thickness of four miles, Wei said.<br /><br />As the plates continue to move, a hot plume of solid rocks slowly rises in the mantle melting the tectonic plate to create volcanoes like the Hawaiian Islands. The mantle plume has a mushroom-like shape with a wide head that is thousands of miles across and a thin tail that is only of a few hundred miles across.  <br /><br />Wei said once this mushroom head reaches Earth’s surface in the ocean, it stretches and flattens out, while it melts the overriding tectonic plate to form a pancake-shaped 20-mile-thick oceanic plateau. This process continues as more of the mantle reaches the surface and the overriding plate continues to move. Over time, what remains is a dotted trail of islands.<br /><div style="width:100%;margin: 0px auto"> <script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block; text-align:center;" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-slot="6157425841"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />“Normally, you would see a pancake-shaped oceanic plateau created by the mushroom's head followed by a dotted chain of islands created by the mushroom’s tail,” Wei said. “The Hawaiian Islands are the end of the tail but where is Hawaii’s pancake head?” <br /><br />There are still debates on whether every mantle plume creates a “pancake” during its earliest history, and the ultimate destination of these pancake-shaped oceanic plateaus. Trying to find ancient oceanic crust, including old oceanic plateaus, is difficult because the crust might have subducted or slid into or underneath an oceanic trench and disappeared from Earth’s surface. <br /><br />Although scientists generally believe the oceanic crust is preserved in Earth’s mantle after subduction, it is usually too thin to be observed using conventional technology, such as seismic tomography. Up until now, this is what Wei thought happened to Hawaii’s “pancake” until he detected a surprising signal in the data. <br /><br />“I spotted an unusually thick chunk of oceanic crust about 500 miles beneath Earth’s surface,” he said. “The thickness of this piece of crust made it distinguishable, but it was still too thin and too deep to be easily found.”<br /><br />Wei and his team compiled the largest dataset of a specific type of seismograms and conducted big data analysis and numerical simulations on the High-Performance Computing Cluster managed by the MSU Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research. His collaborators include: Peter M. Shearer from Scripps Institute of Oceanography; Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni and Lars Stixrude from the University of California, Los Angeles; and Dongdong Tian from MSU.<br /><br />The team also combined the strengths of seismic tomography, seismic reflection and mineral physics. Seismic tomography from previously published work creates a 3-D image which revealed a vague image of the ancient Pacific Plate in the mantle. Seismic reflection results —the core observation of this work—helped the researchers find the thick crust at great depths. Mineral physics was used by the team to prove that the detected signal indicates a piece of oceanic plateau. <br /><br />Plate reconstruction modeling helped the researchers link the newly found oceanic plateau to the Hawaiian “pancake” that was created during the formation of the Hawaii hotspot approximately 100 million years ago. <br /><br />One hypothesis is that the Hawaii “pancake” broke into two pieces. <br /><br />One piece was part of the Izanagi Plate which subducted into the Aleutian Trench and disappeared about 70-80 million years ago. The other piece was part of the Pacific Plate and after it entered the Kamchatka Trench 20-30 million years ago, the heavy oceanic crust sunk deep into Earth’s mantle later until Wei and his team spotted it. <br /><br />This discovery not only provides clues of Hawaii’s early history, but also sheds light on the evolution of other hotspots, seamounts and oceanic plates.The researchers plan to use this new technique combining seismic tomography, seismic reflection and mineral physics to find other “missing pancakes” and to continue looking for evidence of older pieces of Earth’s oceanic crust in the deep Earth. </p><p><br /><u><i><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">The above story is based on <a href="https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2020/hawaii-pancake-discovery#:~:text=An%20oceanic%20plateau%20has%20been,a%20Michigan%20State%20University%20geophysicist." rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://msu.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Michigan State University.</a></span></i></u><br /></p>

Researchers Discover 'Missing' Piece of Hawaii's Formation

  The journey of Hawaii's pancake from its creation at the mantle plume to where it slipped under the Pacific plate and sunk deep into t...

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The Helicoprion Was A Shark With A Buzzsaw In Its Mouth

<p></p><p></p><p></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o0YiIVfzrwI/YAWrdWWzQ6I/AAAAAAAASxw/JWtMrEO4Xzkj4GPRIj_1EzQ1Q52JUN2BgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Helicoprion.%2BPhoto%2BJames%2BSt.%2BJohn%2B%2BFlickr%2B%2BCC%2BBY%2B2.0%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o0YiIVfzrwI/YAWrdWWzQ6I/AAAAAAAASxw/JWtMrEO4Xzkj4GPRIj_1EzQ1Q52JUN2BgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h480/Helicoprion.%2BPhoto%2BJames%2BSt.%2BJohn%2B%2BFlickr%2B%2BCC%2BBY%2B2.0%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helicoprion. Photo: James St. John / Flickr / CC BY 2.0</td></tr></tbody></table><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Terrorizing the seas nearly 300 million years ago, the Helicoprion was a bizarre species of shark that sported one of the craziest sets of teeth in natural history. This unusual feature has been the subject of widespread debate in the scientific community for a century, and it’s easy to see why. The only fossils that have been found of this animal contain sets of spiraled teeth, and scientists are still trying to figure out just how they would have possibly fit into the shark’s mouth.</span><br /></p><p>Of all the vexing fossil mysteries that have confounded paleontologists, few have been as persistent as that of <i>Helicoprion </i>– the name given to petrified whorls of elongate teeth that look like 270 million year old renditions on the theme of buzzsaw. What sort of animal did this Paleozoic remnant belong to, and where did the circular blade actually fit on the animal? Today, Idaho State University paleontologist Leif Tapanila and coauthors announce the answer to a conundrum that has puzzled paleontologists for over a century.<br /><br />Russian geologist Alexander Petrovich Karpinsky coined the name <i>Helicoprion </i>in 1899. Even though the coiled fossils superficially resembled the shelled ammonites and nautilus paleontologists often found in the marine fossil record, Karpinsky realized that the petrifications were actually part of a shark-like fish. But there was no obvious indication of where such an unusual feeding apparatus might fit. Karpinsky’s best guess was that Helicoprion bore the toothy spiral on its nose, like a permanently-tensed party favor studded with a fearsomely pointed dentition.<br /><br />Other paleontologists disagreed. While the American paleontologist Charles Rochester Eastman unabashedly praised the depth of scope of Karpinsky’s monograph – “not one in one hundred essays on paleontological subjects receives anything like the elaborate care and finish” that Karpinsky gave “the remarkable ichthyodorulites” called <i>Helicoprion </i>– the researcher brushed aside his colleague’s spiral-snouted restoration. “Few will be prepared to admit, however, that this highly fanciful sketch can be taken seriously, and, therefore, the least said about it the better,” Eastman wrote. Instead, the American paleoichthyologist pointed out that the “teeth” might actually be spines that jutted from elsewhere on the prehistoric shark’s body. (Karpinksy soon considered another alternative placement, too, with the whorl hanging off the putative shark’s tail.) Lacking a well-preserved <i>Helicoprion </i>with a whorl in place, though, the prehistoric enigma remained open to anyone who wanted to approach the problem.<br /></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />Paleontologists and ichthyologists weren’t shy about proffering new ideas on the nature of <i>Helicoprion</i>. Over a century of speculation produced visions of sharks with whorls hanging off their snouts, lower jaws, dorsal fins, caudal fins, and even embedded deep in their throats. (Click on the image above, by Ray Troll, for a look at the gallery of hypotheses.) Even after paleontologists generally agreed that the teeth belonged at the tip of a long lower jaw, artists and scientists still played with what leeway they had. Was the fearsome spiral fully enclosed in the jaw, or did it hang down awkwardly in an external coil? The true anatomy of <i>Helicoprion </i>was frustratingly difficult to pin down.<br /><p></p><p></p><p><br />When I wrote about <i>Helicoprion </i>in 2011, I highlighted the end-of-the-jaw placement for the tooth whorl as the most likely arrangement. But artist and major <i>Helicoprion </i>fan Ray Troll quickly got in touch with me to say that the classic image probably wasn’t correct, after all. New research was set to give <i>Helicoprion </i>a major makeover. That study has just been published today in Biology Letters, and focuses on a specimen found decades ago.<br /><br />In 1966, paleontologist Svend Erik Bendix-Almgreen described a <i>Helicoprion </i>fossil that had been found 16 years earlier in the Waterloo Phosphate mine near Montpelier, Idaho. This specimen was special. Not only did it display a lovely tooth whorl – which Bendix-Almgreen suggested fit at the end of an elongate lower jaw – but the fossil also contained bits of cartilage from the upper jaw and skull.<br /><br />Despite the extra material, though, Bendix-Almgreen thought that the specimen had been disarticulated and crushed so extensively that properly reassembling <i>Helicoprion </i>was impossible. The jaws sat in the Idaho Museum of Natural History for decades, one of thirty jaws in the institution’s collections, until student Jesse Pruitt started asking curator Leif Tapanila about the strange Permian fish. “He started poking around and asking questions about <i>Helicoprion </i>jaws,” Tapanila says, about “why the jaws were this way and not that.” In particular, Tapanila recalls, Pruitt wanted to know whether the coiled tooth row was a real feature of a living animal or something that happened after death – an artifact of death rather than a representation of life.<br /><br />Tapanila and Pruitt concluded that the <i>Helicoprion </i>whorls really did have their buzzsaw shape in life, but they didn’t stop there. Along with their colleagues and input from Ray Troll, the researchers launched a new, detailed investigation into the museum’s <i>Helicoprion </i>stores. The fossil Bendix-Almgreen described, in particular, seemed to have the potential to yield new clues through CT scans that could visualize the internal secrets of the specimen. The scans, taken at the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray CT Facility in Austin, “came out brilliant” Tapanila says. Not only was the fossil in better shape than expected, but the specimen elucidated two critical facets of the animal – that <i>Helicoprion </i>didn’t have an elongated jaw, and that it wasn’t really a shark.<br /><br />Contrary to the popular long-jaw restorations, the tooth whorl of <i>Helicoprion </i>totally filled the lower jaw. The jaw joint sat right behind the weapon, and the spiral dentition was buttressed by jaw cartilage on either side. And, even stranger, <i>Helicoprion </i>didn’t have any upper teeth to speak of. The spiral of continually-added teeth was the creature’s entire dental armament.<br /><br />Scraps of <i>Helicoprion </i>skull indicate that the fish wasn’t really a shark, either. Of course, as Tapanila points out, the word “shark” doesn’t have the simple definition we might expect. “‘Shark’ doesn’t have biological meaning anymore,” Tapanila told me, confiding “If I talk to a fish expert, and I say ‘shark,’ they get very angry.” Ichthyologists are rapidly rearranging the fish family tree and the definitions for different groups. All the same, the skull cartilage of <i>Helicoprion </i>included a very specific double connection that is characteristic of a group of cartilaginous fish called Euchondrocephali – commonly known as ratfish and chimeras.<br /><br /><i>Helicoprion </i>was not a buzzsaw predecessor to great white or tiger sharks. The fish belonged to the lineage one branch over, near the evolutionary split where the ancestors of living sharks and ratfish parted ways. (And this pulls other weird prehistoric fish with fearsome teeth – such as the scissor-jawed Edestus – away from the shark line and into the ratfish line.) In general form, Tapanila and Troll expect, <i>Helicoprion </i>was an archaic member of the wider ratfish group that looked quite shark-like. And these predators reached impressive sizes. Tapanila estimates that a large <i>Helicoprion </i>would have been about 20 to 25 feet long.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEm_VYlZZio/X7vBnxjRZRI/AAAAAAAASqA/w4X0SgVPIv0k7y2vjSHluH1zmRR_7ltiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/Helicoprion_tooth_whorl%2B%25281%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1166" data-original-width="1200" height="622" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEm_VYlZZio/X7vBnxjRZRI/AAAAAAAASqA/w4X0SgVPIv0k7y2vjSHluH1zmRR_7ltiwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h622/Helicoprion_tooth_whorl%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Helicoprion sp. - fossil shark tooth whorl from the Permian of Idaho, USA. photo by: James St. John<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p> </p><p>After over 100 years, the mystery of the <i>Helicoprion </i>jaw is solved. That doesn’t make the prehistoric fish any less enigmatic. With only a single blade of teeth, how did <i>Helicoprion </i>actually catch and consume prey? Tapanila and other researchers are only just starting to investigate this question. Based on the new restoration, Tapanila suggests that “The analogy to a circular saw is almost perfect.” Not only was the tooth whorl shaped like a saw, but, Tapanila points out, “as the jaw closed [the tooth whorl] rotated the teeth backwards in a rotational saw motion.” Such a strategy would have worked well on squid and other soft-bodied cephalopods of the 270 million year old seas. But even with this realization, we are still left with the question of how such a strange arrangement – singular in the history of life on Earth – evolved in the first place.<br /><br />Tapanila and colleagues are keeping after the enigmas surrounding the fish through studying <i>Helicoprion </i>fossils found in Idaho and elsewhere, including a lower jaw that’s even bigger than the one used in the new Biology Letters study. “You know the line from JAWS, ‘You’re going to need a bigger boat’? Well, I need a bigger CT machine,” Tapanila says. “I have the world’s largest <i>Helicoprion</i> specimen in the world sitting in my museum, and I see evidence for jaws.” The two-foot-wide jaw is too big for a conventional CT scanner, though. “It’s got all the features we hope,” Tapanila says, “but it’s massive, so I need to bring it to [a facility in] Pasadena.” That giant jaw will yield additional clues, and raise new questions. Tapanila suspects that the larger jaw belonged to a different species of <i>Helicoprion </i>than the one he and his team previously scanned, and the features of the bigger jaw might provide new information about how these buzzsaw fish differed across species and body sizes. There are still many secrets to draw out from the jaws of Helicoprion.<br /><br />Yet, even with the remaining mysteries, to see the new vision come out of the rock is a dream come true for Ray Troll. “It’s been a twenty year quest for me,” he says, which all started “when I first saw a whorl and became obsessed by it.” “I’ve drawn the animal so many hundreds of times. Literally hundreds.” And not only is Troll “thrilled” to see the new research, but the new identity of <i>Helicoprion</i> is a bit of a personal victory. Troll heads the wonderfully geeky band Ray Troll and the Ratfish Wranglers. For so long, it seemed that the object of his endless fascination was a shark, but now, Troll says, “It’s really cool to have [Helicoprion] circle back around” to the ratfish side of the family tree. “My two obsessions have all converged,” Troll enthuses, in a spectacular ratfish relative that has for so long challenged scientists to chase after its circuitous spiral trail. </p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>See also: </b></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /><a href="http://www.geologyin.com/2017/12/a-508-million-year-old-sea-predator.html" target="_blank">A 508-million-year-old Sea Predator With a 'Jackknife' Head </a><br /><a href="https://www.geologyin.com/2018/01/the-largest-insect-ever-existed-was.html" target="_blank">The Largest Insect Ever Existed Was a Giant 'Dragonfly' </a></span><br /></p>

The Helicoprion Was A Shark With A Buzzsaw In Its Mouth

Helicoprion. Photo: James St. John / Flickr / CC BY 2.0 Terrorizing the seas nearly 300 million years ago, the Helicoprion was a bizarre spe...

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Man Becomes Overnight Millionaire After Meteorite Crashes Through His Roof

<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_OIPGnh6-A/X7aHZhdjB-I/AAAAAAAASpk/ED8fsPuxIIYuH6MXsPK6fPE65NoPSCuFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1228/Man%2BBecomes%2BOvernight%2BMillionaire%2BAfter%2BMeteorite%2BCrashes%2BThrough%2BHis%2BRoof.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="1228" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t_OIPGnh6-A/X7aHZhdjB-I/AAAAAAAASpk/ED8fsPuxIIYuH6MXsPK6fPE65NoPSCuFQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h360/Man%2BBecomes%2BOvernight%2BMillionaire%2BAfter%2BMeteorite%2BCrashes%2BThrough%2BHis%2BRoof.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p>The space rock, which weighed around 2.1kg, turned out to be worth around US $1.85 million.<br /><br />An Indonesian coffin maker became an instant millionaire when a meteorite worth US $1.85 million crashed through the roof of his house.<br /><br />Josua Hutagalung, 33, was working on a coffin next to his house when the space rock smashed through the veranda at the edge of his living room in Kolang, North Sumatra. <br /><br />The single stone, weighing 2.1kg, left a large hole in the tin roof and ended up buried 15cm deep in the soil beside the house. <br /><br />Metoerites are priced by gram with the cheapest pure-rock varieties fetching  $0.50 to $5.00 per gram., and those with rare extra-terrestrial metals selling for up to $1,000 per gram. <br /><br />Josua, who managed to dig the rock out, said the meteorite was still warm and partially broken when he touched it.<br /><br />It is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old and is classified as CM1/2 carbonaceous Chondrite, an extremely rare variety - worth around $1.85million, or $857 per gram. <br /></p><div style="margin: 0px auto; width: 100%;"> <script async="" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script> <ins class="adsbygoogle" data-ad-client="ca-pub-1021498709184325" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout="in-article" data-ad-slot="6157425841" style="display: block; text-align: center;"></ins> <script> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script> </div><br />'When I lifted it, the stone was still warm and I brought it into the house,' he told Kompas.      <br /><br />He added: 'The sound was so loud that parts of the house were shaking too. And after I searched, I saw that the tin roof of the house had broken.<br /><br />'I strongly suspect that this rock is indeed an object from the sky that many people call a meteorite. Because it is impossible someone deliberately threw it or dropped it from above.'  <br /><br />Local residents in the area had heard large booming sounds which shook their houses. Dozens have visited Josua's house to see the rare object. 'Many people have come, out of curiosity, and want to see the stone,' he said. <br /><br />The meteorite, which is estimated to be 4.5 billion years old, is worth around £1.4 million. Josua was given the equivalent to 30 years' salary for the space rock, according to The Sun. <br /><br />The father of three said he would use some of the money to build a church in his community.<br /><br />'I have also always wanted a daughter, and I hope this is a sign that I will be lucky enough now to have one,' he told The Sun.   <br /><br />US meteorite expert Jared Collins, who secured part of the main mass, said: 'My phone lit up with crazy offers for me to jump on a plane and buy the meteorite. <br /><br />'It was in the middle of the Covid crisis and frankly it was a toss-up between buying the rock for myself or working with scientists and collectors in the US.<br /><br />'I carried as much money as I could muster and went to find Josua, who turned out to be a canny negotiator.'<br /><br />Collins shipped the meteorite to the US, where it was bought by Jay Piatek, a doctor and meteorite collector from Indianapolis, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, US.   <br /><br />The meteorite is classified as CM1/2 carbonaceous Chondrite, an extremely rare variety, the Institute recorded.        <br /><br />Three further fragments of the meteorite were found in nearby areas when it crashed in August - one was discovered in a paddy field less than 3km from Josua's home. <br /><br />The meteorite, which has been officially named as Kolang, is estimated to have a total weight of 2.5kg, according to the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Texas, US.   <br /><br />The interior of the meteor is dark grey and black, with small light-coloured speckles.   <br /><br />'It was a rock meteorite,' The Head of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (Lapan), Thomas Djamaluddin, told Kumparan. He said it was a rare phenomenon for the meteorite to fall in a residential area.<br /><br />He added: 'The amount of waste rock from the formation of the solar system is very large in space. Most of the meteorites fall in locations far from settlements, such as oceans, forests, or deserts.' <br /><br />In August, as many as 200 fragments of a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite fell in Santa Filomena, northeastern Brazil.    <br /><p></p>

Man Becomes Overnight Millionaire After Meteorite Crashes Through His Roof

  The space rock, which weighed around 2.1kg, turned out to be worth around US $1.85 million. An Indonesian coffin maker became an instant m...

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