August 2020

Deadly Lava Lake Is Bubbling in Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Hitting Extreme Temperatures

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A massive lake is bubbling in the belly of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano at temperatures ranging from 176 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit, deeming it one of the world's hottest bodies of water. Experts are using thermal cameras to monitor temperatures</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Deadly lake with waters of 185 degrees develops in the belly of Hawaiian volcano as experts warn of steam-blast explosions</span><br />
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A massive lava lake was firmed in the belly of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii when it erupted in 2018. The water inside it has been bubbling since then and was known as the world's hottest body of water with temperatures ranging from 176 degrees Fahrenheit to 185 degrees Fahrenheit.<br />
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The lake is as deep as One World Trade Center in New York City said the US Geological Survey who is closely monitoring it. But scientists are baffled about it as there are only a few volcanic lakes that reach above 176F. They believe it might be a sign of upcoming hazards, such as steam-blast explosions.<br />
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Between 2010 and 2018, a large lava lake bubbled and spattered within Kilauea’s summit caldera. Then in May 2018, as part of a broader eruption that poured lava from fissures to the east, the lake swiftly drained and part of the caldera floor collapsed. This left a hole nearly as deep as One World Trade Center.<br />
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But that was not all Pele had in store. For about a year, the much-deeper and wider Halema‘uma‘u crater was relatively quiet. But in July 2019, helicopter pilots began to notice water pooling into a pond in the lowest part of the crater. Water levels have risen steadily ever since. Today, the lake—now with a rusty brown sheen on its surface due to chemical reactions taking place in the water—has an area larger than five football fields combined and a maximum depth of roughly 30 meters (100 feet).<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S-dmERoHFIM/X0keKvW6oXI/AAAAAAAASfQ/E51CCLOXSEUQr2q17CGwaV8LRKNkC5wtgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/kilaeua_oli_2020124.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="720" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S-dmERoHFIM/X0keKvW6oXI/AAAAAAAASfQ/E51CCLOXSEUQr2q17CGwaV8LRKNkC5wtgCLcBGAsYHQ/s400/kilaeua_oli_2020124.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The sequence of satellite images above shows Halema‘uma‘u crater before the lava lake drained (left), after the caldera floor had collapsed (middle), and after water pooled on the crater floor for nine months (right). The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired all three natural-color images.<br />
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When the lava lake was present, it appeared in the southeast part of Halema‘uma‘u, though a crust of partially solidified lava on its surface made it appear gray from above. (The circular light gray area with a thin plume of volcanic emissions rising from it marks the location of the lake.) After the caldera collapse, the terrain surrounding the lake changed dramatically, including the formation of a new 140-meter cliff (thin dark line) north of the crater. In the final image, the pond on the summit appears small from Landsat's perspective (30 meters per pixel). The photograph below, taken on April 21, offers a better sense of scale.<br />
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The explanation for the new pond is simple. “We have a drill hole a little more than one kilometer south of the crater where we measure the level of the water table,” explained Don Swanson, a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. “We know that the crater floor dropped a little more than 70 meters below the water table in 2018. Any time that you punch a hole below the level of the water table, water is eventually going to come in and fill that hole.”<br />
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Explaining what the new pond means for the volcano is where the story gets more complicated and interesting. One of the key factors that controls explosive volcanic eruptions is how much water and other gases get caught up within the magma. If magma has a lot of dissolved gases and steam, pressure builds and explosive eruptions can result. If not, lava tends to flow gently from fissures in the ground—as has been the case at Kilauea for the past 200 years.<br />
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Calm eruptions are the exception, not the norm. Over the past 2,500 years, Kilauea has erupted explosively about 60 percent of the time, noted Swanson. “We have been misled by how calm it has been. If this was 1720 rather than 2020, then we would we would not have seen a lava flow for more than 200 years, and we may have thought Kilauea was always an explosive volcano.”<br />
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There are two scenarios that could lead to an explosive eruption. “In one case, magma could rise quickly up the conduit and intersect with the lake,” said Swanson. "In the second, the crater floor could collapse and drop all of the water down to a zone where it would be quickly heated into steam.”<br />
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But that does not mean the next eruption will be explosive. “The next eruption could happen slowly and the water could evaporate,” he said. “We do not want to be alarmist, but we also need to point out to the public that there is an increasing possibility of explosive eruptions at Kilauea.”<br />
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One thing is quite certain: geologists will be closely monitoring Kilauea and its new lake with every tool available, including seismometers, thermal cameras, drones, helicopter surveys, and satellites. “Is the volcano in the process of reverting back to an explosive period that may last for centuries?” said Swanson. “Or is this just a little blip, and we are going to return to quiet lava flows like we had during the 19th and 20th centuries? Only time will tell.”<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146687/a-new-lakewater-not-lavaon-kilauea" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Earth Observatory.</a></span></i></u></div>

Deadly Lava Lake Is Bubbling in Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Hitting Extreme Temperatures

A massive lake is bubbling in the belly of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano at temperatures ranging from 176 to 185 degrees Fahrenheit, deemi...

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Tiny, 48-million-year-old Primitive Horse Looked Like a Badger

extinction, Fossils 7:44 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A reconstruction of a primitive horse the size of a small dog has revealed that the 48-million-year old creature may have looked like a modern-day badger. Pictured, the P. voigti fossil </td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A reconstruction of a primitive horse the size of a small dog has revealed that the 48-million-year old creature may have looked like a modern-day badger.</span><br />
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The former coalfield of Geiseltal in Saxony-Anhalt has yielded large numbers of exceptionally preserved fossil animals, giving palaeontologists a unique window into the evolution of mammals 47 million years ago. A team led by the University of Tübingen and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has shown that the body size of two species of mammals developed in opposite directions. The study was published in "Scientific Reports."<br />
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47 million years ago -- the middle Eocene -- the Earth was much warmer and the area of Geiseltal was a swampy subtropical forest whose inhabitants included ancestors of the horse, ancient tapirs, large terrestrial crocodiles, as well as giant tortoises, lizards and ground-dwelling birds. So rich are the Geiseltal finds that they give researchers an unprecedented high-resolution picture of evolutionary dynamics at the population level.<br />
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A team led by Dr Márton Rabi from the University of Tübingen and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has shown that the body size of two species of mammals developed in opposite directions. The study, published in Scientific Reports, was carried out with Simon Ring and Professor Hervé Bocherens at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment and the University of Tübingen in cooperation with Dr Oliver Wings from the MLU.<br />
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"We were initially interested in the evolution of the ancient horses, which were about the size of a Labrador dog. These animals are particularly abundant in the Geiseltal fossil record," Rabi says. Researchers initially believed they had several species of early horse. "However, we found that here, there was only one species, whose body size shrank significantly with time," Rabi explains. The team wanted to test whether this body size shift was climate-induced, since past global warming caused body-size reduction in ancient mammals.<br />
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Carbon and oxygen isotope studies on fossil teeth provided the scientists with information about the local middle Eocene climate. "They indicate a humid tropical climate. However, we didn't find any evidence for climatic changes in Geiseltal over the period investigated," says Bocherens. To further test the data, the team sought to discover whether the dwarfing process was unique to the horses. For comparison, they examined the evolution of the tapir ancestor called Lophiodon. "We had reason to question the Geiseltal's constant-climate data; so we expected that other mammals would show the same body-size trends as the horses," Simon Ring explains. In a surprising result, the tapirs -- also a single species -- revealed the opposite trend. They grew larger instead of shrinking. While the ancestors of the horse shrank from an average body weight of 39 kilograms to around 26 kilograms over about a million years, the tapirs increased from 124 kilograms to an average body weight of 223 kilograms.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Differing survival strategies</span></h4>
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"All the data indicate that the body size of the horses and tapirs developed differently not because of the climate, but because of different life cycles," explains Bocherens. Small animals reproduce faster and die younger: Relative to their size, they don't have to eat as much to maintain their body mass and can devote more resources to having young. Larger animals live longer and have lower reproduction rates. They have to eat more and therefore have fewer resources for reproduction -- but, being large, face fewer predators and can range further to get better food. That extends their lives and gives them more time to breed. The Geiseltal tapirs and the horses therefore likely maximized the different advantages of their respective life cycle strategies, which caused divergent body size evolution.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Exceptional fossil deposits</span></h4>
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The Geiseltal fossil site is located in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. In the course of open-cast brown coal mining between 1933 and 1993, tens of thousands of fossil specimens of more than one hundred species were discovered there. Many were the ancestors of modern vertebrates. "The Geiseltal is as important a fossil site as the Messel Pit near Darmstadt, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site," says Dr. Rabi. "But because the Geiseltal collection was hardly accessible during East German times, it kind of went off the radar."</div>
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://pressemitteilungen.pr.uni-halle.de/index.php?modus=pmanzeige&pm_id=3249" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.uni-halle.de/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg</a>. </span></i></u><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; float: none; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br />
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Tiny, 48-million-year-old Primitive Horse Looked Like a Badger

A reconstruction of a primitive horse the size of a small dog has revealed that the 48-million-year old creature may have looked like a m...

Kasolite Flowers

Minerals 7:02 PM

<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/-mR9PFPmmBZI/YO27ns8SllI/AAAAAAAATMI/8raJMfbGS9A9Cx5QAKivFCUkkcsMThDkwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/Kasolite%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mR9PFPmmBZI/YO27ns8SllI/AAAAAAAATMI/8raJMfbGS9A9Cx5QAKivFCUkkcsMThDkwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/Kasolite%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="Bright yellow kasolite crystal "flowers" on matrix. Musonoi Mine, Kolwezi, Kolwezi District, Katanga Copper Crescent, Katanga (Shaba), Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaïre) © Stephan Wolfsried" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bright yellow kasolite crystal "flowers" on matrix. Musonoi Mine, Kolwezi, Kolwezi District, Katanga Copper Crescent, Katanga (Shaba), Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaïre) <br /><b>Photo: © Stephan Wolfsried</b></td></tr></tbody></table> <br /></p><p>Kasolite is an uncommon mineral that is found as an oxidation product of uraninite and can be found in localities in, additionally, Gabon, Germany, England, France, Australia, the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other minor localities. Kasolite is strongly radioactive.<br /> </p><p><b>Formula: </b><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f8f8; display: inline !important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Pb(UO</span><sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f8f8; border: 0px none; bottom: -0.25em; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: 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: #f8f8f8; display: inline !important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">)SiO</span><sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f8f8; border: 0px none; bottom: -0.25em; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: 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: #f8f8f8; display: inline !important; float: none; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">·H</span><sub style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f8f8; border: 0px none; bottom: -0.25em; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 0; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">2</sub></span></span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #f8f8f8; color: black; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times;">O</span></span><br /></span>Crystal System: </b>Monoclinic<br /><b>Crystal Habit:</b> Radial, Prismatic, Fibrous<br /><b>Color: </b>green, gray green, yellow, yellow brown, reddish orange<br /><b>Streak: </b>light brownish yellow<br /><b>Hardness: 4</b><br /><br /><br /> </p>

Kasolite Flowers

Bright yellow kasolite crystal "flowers" on matrix. Musonoi Mine, Kolwezi, Kolwezi District, Katanga Copper Crescent, Katanga (Sha...

99-Million-Year-Old ‘Hell Ant’ Attack Captured in Amber

amber, Fossils 7:47 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photomicrograph from top view of the hell ant, Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri, restraining its prey, an extinct cockroach relative called Caputoraptor elegans, preserved in amber. Image: © From Barden, Perrichot </td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A prehistoric, and long-extinct insect known as a hell ant, has been discovered frozen in amber by scientists.</span></i><br />
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A fossil recently recovered from the age of the dinosaurs is giving scientists the most vivid picture yet of how one of the most enigmatic and fearsome groups of ants to exist once used their uncanny tusk-like mandibles and diverse horns to successfully hunt down victims for nearly 20 million years, before vanishing from the planet...<br />
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In findings published in the journal Current Biology, researchers from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Rennes in France have unveiled a stunning 99-million-year-old fossil pristinely preserving an enigmatic insect predator from the Cretaceous Period — a ‘hell ant’ (haidomyrmecine) — as it embraced its unsuspecting final victim, an extinct relative of the cockroach known as Caputoraptor elegans. <br />
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The ancient encounter, locked in amber recovered from Myanmar, offers a detailed glimpse at a newly identified prehistoric ant species Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri, and presents some of the first direct evidence showing how it and other hell ants once used their killer features — snapping their bizarre, but deadly, scythe-like mandibles in a vertical motion to pin prey against their horn-like appendages.      <br />
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Researchers say the rare fossil demonstrating the hell ant’s feeding mode offers a possible evolutionary explanation for its unusual morphology and highlights a key difference between some of the earliest ant relatives and their modern counterparts, which today uniformly feature mouthparts that grasp by moving together laterally. The hell ant lineage, along with their striking predatory traits, are suspected to have vanished along with many other early ant groups during periods of ecological change around the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65 million years ago.<br />
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“Fossilized behavior is exceedingly rare, predation especially so. As paleontologists, we speculate about the function of ancient adaptations using available evidence, but to see an extinct predator caught in the act of capturing its prey is invaluable,” said Phillip Barden, assistant professor at NJIT’s Department of Biological Sciences and lead author of the study. “This fossilized predation confirms our hypothesis for how hell ant mouthparts worked … The only way for prey to be captured in such an arrangement is for the ant mouthparts to move up and downward in a direction unlike that of all living ants and nearly all insects.” <br />
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“Since the first hell ant was unearthed about a hundred years ago, it’s been a mystery as to why these extinct animals are so distinct from the ants we have today,” Barden added. “This fossil reveals the mechanism behind what we might call an ‘evolutionary experiment,’ and although we see numerous such experiments in the fossil record, we often don’t have a clear picture of the evolutionary pathway that led to them.”<br />
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Barden’s team suggests that adaptations for prey-capture likely explain the rich diversity of mandibles and horns observed in the 16 species of hell ants identified to date. Some taxa with unarmed, elongate horns such as Ceratomyrmex apparently grasped prey externally, while other hell ants such as Linguamyrmex vladi, or “Vlad the Impaler” discovered by Barden and colleagues in 2017, was thought to have used a metal-reinforced horn on its head to impale prey — a trait potentially used to feed on the internal liquid (hemolymph) of insects. <br />
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Barden says the earliest hell ant ancestors would have first gained the ability to move their mouthparts vertically. This, in turn, would functionally integrate the mouthparts and head in a way that was unique to this extinct lineage. <br />
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“Integration is a powerful shaping force in evolutionary biology … when anatomical parts function together for the first time, this opens up new evolutionary trajectories as the two features evolve in concert,” explained Barden. “The consequences of this innovation in mouthpart movement with the hell ants are remarkable. While no modern ants have horns of any kind, some species of hell ant possess horns coated with serrated teeth, and others like Vlad are suspected to have reinforced its horn with metal to prevent its own bite from impaling itself.” <br />
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To explore further, the researchers compared the head and mouthpart morphology of Ceratomyrmex and several other hell ant species (such as head, horn and mandible size) with similar datasets of living and fossil ant species. The team also conducted a phylogenetic analysis to reconstruct evolutionary relationships among both Cretaceous and modern ants. The team’s analyses confirmed that hell ants belong to one of the earliest branches of the ant evolutionary tree and are each other’s closest relatives. Moreover, the relationship between mandible and head morphology is unique in hell ants compared to living lineages as a result of their specialized prey-capture behavior. The analyses also demonstrated that elongated horns evolved twice in hell ants. <br />
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While the fossil has finally provided Barden’s lab with firmer answers as to how this long-lost class of ant predators functioned and found success for nearly 20 million years, questions persist such as what led these and other lineages to go extinct while modern ants flourished into the ubiquitous insects we know today. Barden’s team is now seeking to describe species from new fossil deposits to learn more about how extinction impacts groups differentially. <br />
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“Over 99% of all species that have ever lived have gone extinct,” said Barden. “As our planet undergoes its sixth mass extinction event, it’s important that we work to understand extinct diversity and what might allow certain lineages to persist while others drop out. I think fossil insects are a reminder that even something as ubiquitous and familiar as ants have undergone extinction.”<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://news.njit.edu/embargo-new-fossil-discovery-shows-how-ancient-hell-ants-hunted-killer-headgear" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by <a href="https://news.njit.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">NJIT</a>.</span></i></u></div>

99-Million-Year-Old ‘Hell Ant’ Attack Captured in Amber

Photomicrograph from top view of the hell ant, Ceratomyrmex ellenbergeri, restraining its prey, an extinct cockroach relative called Capu...

Gigantic Dinosaur Footprints Are Found on the Roof of a Cave

dinosaur, Earth History 8:01 PM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A scientist on a caving trip happened to spot dinosaur tracks in the ceiling of Castelbouc Cave in France. Credit: Jean-David Moreau et al./J. Vertebr. Paleontol.</td></tr>
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Scientists have discovered the prehistoric footprints of a colossal dinosaur on the roof of a cave in France. Nope, this doesn't mean that giant dinosaurs were dancing on the ceilings of caves like a sticky-footed Spiderman, although it goes to show the wealth of prehistoric discoveries that could be found lurking in the geology all around us.<br />
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Recently reported in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, researchers from the University of Burgundy–Franche-Comté discovered the three dinosaur trackways during an expedition in 2015 around the labyrinth-like Castelbouc Cave beneath the Causse Méjean plateau in southern France.<br />
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“What’s so incredible is that thousands of people have passed through this cave without ever seeing a thing,” says a still dumbfounded Jean-David Moreau, a palaeontologist at the Biogeosciences Laboratory in Dijon (northeastern France) who, as head of the Lozère Palaeontology Association, organised the potholers’ outing that day. “All it took was for one person to take a closer look than usual at the ceiling, and there they were, clearly visible: the tracks of footprints apparently made by giant dinosaurs.”<br />
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Identifying them with the light from their headlamps alone was no easy task, and Moreau and his team had to return several times to confirm their amazing find: three twenty-metre-long trails left by sauropods, four-legged herbivorous dinosaurs from the Middle Jurassic, 170 million years ago.<br />
“In two of the trackways, you can see alternate foot- and handprints, the hands being identified by their half-moon shape. Some of the footprints show five toes as well as claws,” the scientist explains. “The largest are 1.25 metres in length, making them among the biggest ever identified worldwide, and were made by animals that must have measured around 30 metres.”<br />
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The discovery is unprecedented in more ways than one. To begin with, giant dinosaur prints had never been previously discovered in a cave anywhere in the world. But it is also the first time that sauropod footprints have been found in the Causses basin, even though palaeontologists have already uncovered a wealth of trace fossils there. The region, with an area of several hundred square kilometres and straddling the departments of the Aveyron, Lozère, Gard and Hérault, boasts dozens of trace fossil sites. However, no vestige of the giant herbivores had ever been spotted until now.<br />
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“The Causses basin, also called the Causses gulf, recorded the entire geological history of the Jurassic, which lasted for 55 million years,” says Moreau, who is a specialist in ichnology, the branch of palaeontology concerned with the study of trace fossils. “During this period, the sea retreated three times from the region, enabling dinosaurs to settle there: 200 million years ago, 168 million years ago – when the Castelbouc tracks are dated – and 145 million years ago.”<br />
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Sediments accumulated over time, and geological layer after layer was laid down. Millions of years after the dinosaurs lived there, water infiltrated the limestones and clays of this karst environment, eventually forming the hundreds of natural cavities found in the Causses. Which explains why dinosaur tracks can be seen on the roof of a cave, which at first might appear somewhat counter-intuitive!<br />
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“There hasn’t been any upheaval in the geological strata. The trails that we see are actually casts, corresponding to the base of the sauropods’ feet,” Moreau explains. “It’s as if you were looking at the tracks left by the dinosaurs from below. What happened is that infiltrated water eroded the rock beneath the sedimentary layer which contains the footprints.”<br />
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The palaeontologist, who specialises in plant fossils as well as trace fossils, was able to reconstruct the ecosystem in which the sauropods lived 170 million years ago. “We found plants, in particular remains of conifers, and small remnants of saltwater fish. An analysis of the sediments carried out in the cave told us that it was at the land-sea interface, probably on the edge of a lagoon surrounded by conifers.”<br />
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The excitement generated by the discovery has nurtured the researcher’s passion for the geologically rich region of the Grands Causses, where he hopes to find more traces of the sauropods’ presence.   “As well as continuing to explore the surfaces and outcrops where footprints are traditionally found, we’ll now be taking a very close look at the roofs of the abundant natural cavities in the area,” says Moreau, who has already started to encourage the region’s potholers to be on the lookout for fresh evidence.<br />
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<i><u><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00972-y?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=organic&utm_campaign=NGMT_USG_JC01_GL_reshigh" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">materials </a>provided by<a href="https://en.u-bourgogne.fr/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> University of Burgundy–Franche-Comté.</a></span></u></i></div>

Gigantic Dinosaur Footprints Are Found on the Roof of a Cave

A scientist on a caving trip happened to spot dinosaur tracks in the ceiling of Castelbouc Cave in France. Credit: Jean-David Moreau et a...

Fossilized Dinosaur Egg Found in Japan Recognized as World's Smallest

dinosaur, Earth History, Fossils 8:33 PM

Fossilized Dinosaur Egg Found in Japan Recognized as World's Smallest

(Photo courtesy of the University of Tsukuba and the Museum of Nature and Human Activities, Hyogo)(Kyodo) A team of researchers said...

World’s ‘Smallest Dinosaur’ is Actually a Lizard Scientists Admit in Retraction

amber, Fossils 8:42 PM

World’s ‘Smallest Dinosaur’ is Actually a Lizard Scientists Admit in Retraction

This fossil trapped in amber was thought to be a dinosaur but is likely a lizard.Credit: Lida Xing Just a couple of months following...

Star Hollandite Quartz

Mineralogy, Minerals 7:56 PM

Star Hollandite Quartz

Rare Urchin Quartz (Quartz crystal with Mannardite phontom inside) from Brazil Photo: Mike Bowers Star Hollandite Quartz is a type of...

'Fool's Gold' May Be Valuable After All

Geochemistry, Geology, Mineralogy 7:26 PM

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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wCg7k_bJTKs/XymL5qbWLMI/AAAAAAAASbg/t0oOSG0n51Y-JpiMJK3UuOqO6Rvqi26UwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Shining%2BPyrite%2BFeS%25E2%2582%2582%2Bcrystals%2Bfrom%2BHuanzala%252C%2BPeru.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="955" data-original-width="960" height="636" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wCg7k_bJTKs/XymL5qbWLMI/AAAAAAAASbg/t0oOSG0n51Y-JpiMJK3UuOqO6Rvqi26UwCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/Shining%2BPyrite%2BFeS%25E2%2582%2582%2Bcrystals%2Bfrom%2BHuanzala%252C%2BPeru.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> Photo: Michigan Rocks & Minerals</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">For the First Time, Researchers Electrically Transform Material From Non-magnetic to Magnetic</span></h4>
In a breakthrough new study, scientists and engineers at the University of Minnesota have electrically transformed the abundant and low-cost non-magnetic material iron sulfide, also known as "fool's gold" or pyrite, into a magnetic material.<br />
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This is the first time scientists have ever electrically transformed an entirely non-magnetic material into a magnetic one, and it could be the first step in creating valuable new magnetic materials for more energy-efficient computer memory devices.<br />
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The research is published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).<br />
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"Most people knowledgeable in magnetism would probably say it was impossible to electrically transform a non-magnetic material into a magnetic one. When we looked a little deeper, however, we saw a potential route, and made it happen," said Chris Leighton, the lead researcher on the study and a University of Minnesota Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.<br />
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Leighton and his colleagues, including Eray Aydil at New York University and Laura Gagliardi (chemistry) at the University of Minnesota, have been studying iron sulfide, or 'fool's gold,' for more than a decade for possible use in solar cells. Sulfur in particular is a highly abundant and low-cost byproduct of petroleum production. Unfortunately, scientists and engineers haven't found a way to make the material efficient enough to realize low-cost, earth-abundant solar cells.<br />
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"We really went back to the iron sulfide material to try to figure out the fundamental roadblocks to cheap, non-toxic solar cells," Leighton said. "Meanwhile, my group was also working in the emerging field of magnetoionics where we try to use electrical voltages to control magnetic properties of materials for potential applications in magnetic data storage devices. At some point we realized we should be combining these two research directions, and it paid off."<br />
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Leighton said their goal was to manipulate the magnetic properties of materials with a voltage alone, with very little electrical current, which is important to make magnetic devices more energy-efficient. Progress to date had included turning on and off ferromagnetism, the most technologically important form of magnetism, in other types of magnetic materials. Iron sulfide, however, offered the prospect of potentially electrically inducing ferromagnetism in an entirely non-magnetic material.<br />
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In the study, the researchers used a technique called electrolyte gating. They took the non-magnetic iron sulfide material and put it in a device in contact with an ionic solution, or electrolyte, comparable to Gatorade. They then applied as little as 1 volt (less voltage than a household battery), moved positively charged molecules to the interface between the electrolyte and the iron sulfide, and induced magnetism. Importantly, they were able to turn off the voltage and return the material to its non-magnetic state, meaning that they can reversibly switch the magnetism on and off.<br />
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"We were pretty surprised it worked," Leighton said. "By applying the voltage, we essentially pour electrons into the material. It turns out that if you get high enough concentrations of electrons, the material wants to spontaneously become ferromagnetic, which we were able to understand with theory. This has lots of potential. Having done it with iron sulfide, we guess we can do it with other materials as well."<br />
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Leighton said they would never have imagined trying this approach if it wasn't for his team's research studying iron sulfide for solar cells and the work on magnetoionics.<br />
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"It was the perfect convergence of two areas of research," he said.<br />
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Leighton said the next step is to continue research to replicate the process at higher temperatures, which the team's preliminary data suggest should certainly be possible. They also hope to try the process with other materials and to demonstrate potential for real devices.<br />
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<u><i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The above story is based on <a href="https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/research-brief-fools-gold-may-be-valuable-after-all" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Materials</a> provided by <a href="http://www.umn.edu/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">University of Minnesota</a>.</span></i></u></div>

'Fool's Gold' May Be Valuable After All

Photo: Michigan Rocks & Minerals For the First Time, Researchers Electrically Transform Material From Non-magnetic to Magnetic...

New Study Unravels Secret to Subduction

earth, Geology, Tectonic 7:35 PM

New Study Unravels Secret to Subduction

Credit: Australian National University Subduction zones are pivotal for the recycling of Earth’s outer layer into its interior. Howev...

Geology In