| July 02, 2009 |
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our time will build eternity |
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Rock Bands Spin An Oxygen Record Moffett Field CA (SPX) Jun 23, 2009
The first half of Earth's history was devoid of oxygen, but it was far from lifeless. There is ongoing debate over who the main biological players were in this pre-oxygen world, but researchers are digging up clues in some of the oldest sedimentary rocks on the planet. Most scientists believe the amount of atmospheric oxygen was insignificant up until about 2.4 billion years ago when the ... read moreDigital age: Chinese fossil revives bird-dino link
Paris (AFP) June 17, 2009A young dinosaur that fatefully wandered into a mudpool around 155 million years could help explain the mysterious evolution of birds, says the world's most famous fossil-hunter. A team led Xing Xu, a Chinese dino expert with scores of astonishing finds to his name, uncovered the fossilised remains of a small, exceptional dinosaur in the Shishugou Formation in western China's Junggar Basin. ... more
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California coastal bay rich with fossils
Bakersfield, Calif. (UPI) Jun 6, 2009 A former coastal bay near Bakersfield, Calif., is filled with the fossilized remains of marine animals whose species have long gone extinct, scientists say. Scientists from the University of California-Berkeley said the Sharktooth Hill site could be seen as the richest fossil site in the entire world -- a layer of fossils offers clues to animal species dating back to 15 million years ... more Ancient eruption killed off world's sea life: scientists
Washington (AFP) May 28, 2009A huge volcanic eruption in China some 260 million years ago led to the sudden extermination of marine life clear around the world, British paleontologists announced Thursday, in a report being published this week in the journal Science. The researchers were able to pinpoint the exact timing of the massive eruption thanks to a layer of fossilized rock which showed mass extinction of ... more Bombing Earth Into Life
Boulder CO (SPX) May 25, 2009The bombardment of Earth nearly 4 billion years ago by asteroids as large as Kansas would not have had the firepower to extinguish potential early life on the planet and may even have given it a boost, says a new University of Colorado at Boulder study. Impact evidence from lunar samples, meteorites and the pockmarked surfaces of the inner planets paints a picture of a violent environment ... more Wetlands Likely Source Of Methane From Ancient Warming Event
San Diego CA (SPX) May 04, 2009An expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago, according to an international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. The finding is expected to come as a relief to scientists and climate watchers concerned that huge accelerati ... more |
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Launching Some 500 Pounds Of Pterosaurs Took Four Legs
Baltimore MD (SPX) Jan 14, 2009Pterosaurs have long suffered an identity crisis. Pop culture heedlessly - and wrongly - lumps these extinct flying lizards in with dinosaurs. Even paleontologists assumed that because the creatures flew, they were birdlike in many ways, such as using only two legs to take flight. Now comes what is believed to be first-time evidence that launching some 500 pounds of reptilian heft into fli ... more Study: Pterosaurs used 4 legs to lift off
Baltimore (UPI) Jan 7, 2009Dinosaur-era pterosaurs, often referred to as pterodactyls, used their "arms" as well as their legs to leap into flight, a computerized model suggests. In fact, pterosaurs -- believed to have died off 65 million years ago in the same cataclysm that killed off the dinosaurs on land and plesiosaurs at sea -- had much stronger "arms" than legs, which is the opposite of the way birds are bu ... more When Life On Earth Became So Big
Blacksburg VA (SPX) Jan 05, 2009In 3.5 billion years, life on earth went from single microscopic cells to giant sequoias and blue whales. Scientists have now documented quantitatively that the increase in maximum size of organisms was not gradual, but happened in two distinct bursts "tied to the geological evolution of the planet," said Michal Kowalewski, professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech. Jonathan L. Payne, assi ... more Magma provides glimpse of past
San Francisco (UPI) Dec 19, 2008 Geologists say an undisturbed chamber of molten rock in Hawaii is offering new insight into the way continental rock is formed. The magma, discovered in 2005 when a geothermal power company drilled a mile and a half deep on one of the islands, is the first contact scientists have had with the molten rock from anywhere other than a volcano, The Washington Post reported Thursday. ... more |
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