In life, Tyrannosaurus rex usually got the best of the less fearsome duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs: T. rex ate them.
But in death, the plant-eating hadrosaurs have proved more resilient than their carnivorous predators — and apparently all other dinosaurs — at least by the measure of their skin. (more…)
Regierungsvorschlag nur ein fauler Kompromiss
Der NABU fordert von der Bundesregierung ein Fracking-Verbot für ganz Deutschland. „Die Einigung zwischen Bundesumweltministerin Barbara Hendricks und Bundeswirtschaftminister Sigmar Gabriel ist ein fauler Kompromiss zu Lasten des Schutzes von Mensch, Natur und Trinkwasser“, sagte NABU-Präsident Olaf Tschimpke. „Statt eines Fracking-Moratoriums auf Zeit brauchen wir ein dauerhaftes Fracking-Verbot, und zwar in allen Lagerstätten, ob konventionell oder unkonventionell.“ Aus NABU-Sicht müssten auch die Förderung von Erdgas, aus ehemals porösen und nun versiegelten Gesteinsformationen, so genanntes Tight-Gas, sowie der Einsatz der Fracking-Technologie in konventionellen Lagerstätten verboten werden. Die Bundesregierung plant lediglich ein Fracking-Moratorium für Schiefer- und Kohleflözgasvorkommen aus unkonventionellen Lagerstätten bis 3.000 Meter Tiefe bis 2021/2022. Allerdings mit einer weiteren Einschränkung: Forschungs- und Entwicklungsvorhaben sollen zulässig bleiben. Das Moratorium soll 2021 überprüft werden. (more…)
New basin-wide assessment of recoverable resources and reserves
The Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana contains about 162 billion short tons (BST) of recoverable coal from a total of 1.07 trillion short tons of in-place resources according to a new USGS assessment. This assessment also estimates that 25 BST of those resources are currently economical to recover, the first such estimate released by the USGS for coal for an entire basin.
The Powder River Basin—a large geologic feature located in northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana—contains the largest deposits of low-sulfur subbituminous coal in the world. This study is significant because it illustrates that only a relatively small percentage of in-place coal resources are technically and economically recoverable. (more…)
The asteroid collision widely thought to have killed the dinosaurs also led to extreme devastation among snake and lizard species, according to new research — including the extinction of a newly identified lizard Yale and Harvard scientists have named Obamadon gracilis.
“The asteroid event is typically thought of as affecting the dinosaurs primarily,” said Nicholas R. Longrich, a postdoctoral associate with Yale’s Department of Geology and Geophysics and lead author of the study. “But it basically cut this broad swath across the entire ecosystem, taking out everything. Snakes and lizards were hit extremely hard.” (more…)
Sequencing the barley genome will sow many benefits
Some 10,000 years ago, people found they didn’t have to live as nomads, hunting and gathering all their food. In the Fertile Crescent, they started planting crops.
The Fertile Crescent extended from the Nile Valley and along the eastern Mediterranean Coast, through the Tigris and Euphrates valleys of Mesopotamia and down to the Persian Gulf. There, the foundation crops of the Western World were first domesticated. (more…)
The most-studied mass extinction in Earth history happened 65 million years ago and is widely thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs. New University of Washington research indicates that a separate extinction came shortly before that, triggered by volcanic eruptions that warmed the planet and killed life on the ocean floor.
The well-known second event is believed to have been triggered by an asteroid at least 6 miles in diameter slamming into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. But new evidence shows that by the time of the asteroid impact, life on the seafloor – mostly species of clams and snails – was already perishing because of the effects of huge volcanic eruptions on the Deccan Plateau in what is now India. (more…)
Researchers at Yale have identified an ancient slithering creature from the time of T. rex as the most primitive known snake, a finding with implications for the debate over snake origins.
“It’s the missing-link snake,” said Nicholas Longrich, a postdoctoral fellow in Yale’s Department of Geology & Geophysics and the lead author of a paper about the lizard-like snake published July 25 online in the journal Nature. “It’s the ‘Lucy’ of snakes.”
The paper argues that snakes descend from terrestrial rather than marine ancestors, as recently proposed by others, and that snakes emerged once lizards developed long, limbless bodies for burrowing. (more…)
*UA researchers are looking for, among other things, how fire changed the landscape of the Northern Great Plains as ancient hunters went after big game.*
Researchers from the School of Anthropology at the University of Arizona are investigating the complex relationship between climate change and modifications that humans have made to the landscape. And among the tools they are using in the pursuit of this knowledge are a bunch of old tires.
Led by Maria Nieves Zedeño from the UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, the Kutoyis Archaeological Project is a four-year collaboration focused on prehistoric bison hunting societies in the Northern Great Plains. The project is funded by the National Park Service and the National Science Foundation. (more…)
