Forscherin der Universität Tübingen setzt die Höhe des Plateaus im Eozän vor 40 Millionen Jahren 1.500 Meter niedriger als heute an
Die tibetische Hochebene liegt heute auf einer Höhe von durchschnittlich 4.500 Metern über dem Meeresspiegel und ist die größte aktive Gebirgsbildungszone der Erde. Bisherige Analysen hatten meist ergeben, dass das Plateau bereits im Eozän vor rund 40 Millionen Jahren annähernd so hoch war wie heute. (more…)
Delaware Geological Survey discovers evidence of past earthquakes
Delaware Geological Survey (DGS) scientists have uncovered hard proof of faults in northern Delaware, indicating the occurrence of earthquakes millions of years ago.
The geologic evidence turned up in sediment samples removed during a well-drilling project this summer from depths ranging 137 to 251 feet down in Smyrna and the Woodland Beach Wildlife Area.
“People have postulated that there are faults in this area,” DGS Senior Scientist Scott Andres said. “Now we have evidence of it.” (more…)
*NSF enabled the assembly of an international, interdisciplinary team that was the first to quantitatively document body size patterns over the past 100 million years*
Researchers have demonstrated that the extinction of dinosaurs some 65 million years ago paved the way for mammals to get bigger, about a thousand times larger than they had been when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The study, released in the journal Science, is the first to quantitatively document the patterns of body size of mammals after the existence of dinosaurs.
About the Image: The largest land mammals that ever lived, Indricotherium and Deinotherium, would have towered over the living African Elephant. Indricotherium lived during the Eocene to the Oligocene Epoch (37 to 23 million years ago) and reached a mass of 15,000 kg, while Deinotherium was around from the late-Miocene until the early Pleistocene (8.5 to 2.7 million years ago) and weighed as much as 17,000 kg. Image credit: NSF RCN IMPPS (more…)
