#Whoops! Amazon Green-Up Actually Satellite Error Surprising dry season growth spurts spotted in the beleaguered Amazon rainforest are fake the result of misleading satellite data a new study finds.
</p><p>This snippet of the Cretaceous ended up frozen in rock and paleontologists discovered the prints as early as 1917.
The new fossils date back about 50 million to 53 million years ago to the warm Eocene epoch
Greenwood and his colleagues found it in coal-rich rock beds in the park the site of a swampy spot in the Eocene
which started out evolutionarily the size of a mini schnauzer shrunk to housecat size during the warmest part of the early Eocene.)
which makes sense as it shows up in many forested Eocene environments Eberle said. The early Eocene was a steamy time On earth.
The breakup of the supercontinent Pangea came with no small amount of volcanic activity which released billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
There are rock art drawings of hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses from the early Holocene. The tombs of Egyptian pharaohs are decorated with hunting scenes that show
The researchers found that Egypt was home to 37 large-bodied mammals (those over 8. 8 lbs. or 4 kilograms) during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene.
However our findings show that cave art was made at opposite ends of the Pleistocene Eurasian world at about the same time suggesting these practices have deeper origins perhaps in Africa before our species left this continent and spread across the globe.
Eighty percent of the planet's species died off at the end of the Cretaceous period 65.5 million years ago including most marine life in the upper ocean as well as swimmers and drifters in lakes and rivers.
and cross-referencing their data with environmental niche models that predict the geographic distribution of species the scientists determined their Ice age specimens belonged to Megachile gentilis a bee species that still exists today.
and projected their habitats onto a geographic map Holden said. They found essentially that M. gentilis was far more likely than M. onobrychidis to have lived in the La Brea area 23000 to 40000 years ago (the approximate age of the excavated nest cells.
and her team concluded that the leafcutter bees lived in a low-elevation moist environment during the Late Pleistocene.
and doesn't appear in the Sierra nevada said Jesse Hahm a geologist at the University of Wyoming
The plutons have been brought to the surface by millions of years of erosion along with uplift from tectonic forces at the boundary between the North american and Pacific plates.
Hahm and his co-authors linked the pluton boundaries to the Sierra's patchy forest cover by comparing satellite forest cover data with geologic maps and collecting hundreds of rock samples.
which widely between plutons In some cases the trees revealed fine-scale pluton boundaries overlooked by earlier geologic mappers Hahm said.
#Triassic period Facts: Climate, Animals & Plants The Triassic period was the first period of the Mesozoic era and occurred between 251 million and 199 million years ago.
It followed the great mass extinction at the end of the Permian period and was a time when life outside of the oceans began to diversify.
At the beginning of the Triassic most of the continents were concentrated in the giant C-shaped supercontinent known as Pangaea.
Climate was generally very dry over much of Pangaea with very hot summers and cold winters in the continental interior.
Late in the Triassic seafloor spreading in the Tethys Sea led to rifting between the northern and southern portions of Pangaea
which would be completed in the Jurassic period. The oceans had been depopulated massively by the Permian Extinction when as many as 95 percent of extant marine genera were wiped out by high carbon dioxide levels.
Fossil fish from the Triassic period are very uniform which indicates that few families survived the extinction.
The mid-to late Triassic period shows the first development of modern stony corals and a time of modest reef building activity in the shallower waters of the Tethys near the coasts of Pangaea.
Early in the Triassic a group of reptiles the Order ichthyosauria returned to the ocean. Fossils of early ichthyosaurs are lizard-like
and clearly show their tetrapod ancestry. Their vertebrae indicate they probably swam by moving their entire bodies side to side like modern eels.
Later in the Triassic ichthyosaurs evolved into purely marine forms with dolphin-shaped bodies and long-toothed snouts.
By the mid-Triassic the ichthyosaurs were dominant in the oceans. One genus Shonisaurus measured more than 50 feet long (15 meters)
Plesiosaurs were also present but not as large as those of the Jurassic period. Plants and insects did not go through any extensive evolutionary advances during the Triassic.
Due to the dry climate the interior of Pangaea was mostly desert. In higher latitudes gymnosperms survived
and conifer forests began to recover from the Permian Extinction. Mosses and ferns survived in coastal regions.
The only new insect group of the Triassic was the grasshoppers. The Mesozoic era is often known as the Age of reptiles.
Two groups of animals survived the Permian Extinction: Therapsids which were mammal-like reptiles and the more reptilian Archosaurs.
In the early Triassic it appeared that the Therapsids would dominate the new era. One genus Lystrosaurus has been called the Permian/Triassic Noah#as fossils of this animal predate the mass extinction
but are also commonly found in early Triassic strata. However by the mid-Triassic most of the Therapsids had become extinct
and the more reptilian Archosaurs were clearly dominant. Archosaurs had two temporal openings in the skull
and teeth that were more firmly set in the jaw than those of their Therapsid contemporaries.
The terrestrial apex predators of the Triassic were the Rauisuchians an extinct group of Archosaurs.
Another lineage of Archosaurs evolved into true dinosaurs by the mid-Triassic. One Genus coelophysis was bipedal.
By the late Triassic a third group of Archosaurs had branched into the first pterosaurs. Sharovipteryx was a glider about the size of a modern crow with wing membranes attached to long hind legs.
The first mammals evolved near the end of the Triassic period from the nearly extinct Therapsids.
Early mammals of the late Triassic and early Jurassic were very small rarely more than a few inches in length.
The Mongol invasion took enough carbon dioxide out of the air as is emitted annually by worldwide gasoline use today researchers reported in the journal The Holocene.
The reasons were part technological and part geographical: In a world where agriculture was on the rise
either because of geographical barriers such as Egypt's desert or practical ones such as the need to access to irrigation people have to put up with more abuse of power from their leaders.
She and her collaborators also conducted a survey of gut symbionts in three bumblebee species to determine whether environmental factors especially agricultural management or geographic location affected symbiont communities.
In the Cretaceous period between 120 million and 65 million years ago researchers now think wildfires helped trigger the development of the first flowering plants.
With new discoveries in astrophysics evolutionary biology molecular genetics geology and paleoanthropology a continuous story has emerged starting from the Big bang. Soon after that penultimate origin event
Life evolved into evermore complex forms invertebrates vertebrates reptiles and so on with dinosaurs gaining dominance midway through the Mesozoic era several hundred million years ago.
while Homo sapiens continued to evolve technology culture and consciousness turning humans'ancestors into a near-geologic force on the Earth.
and videos as well as chart the geographic coordinates of deforestation or degradation occurring within threatened areas said Gabriel Ribenboim a researcher who's leading the project for FAS.
Discovered in rock from the Early Cretaceous period about 140 million years ago the new dinosaur lived later than its relatives found in Africa Europe
and North america which hail from the Jurassic the period before the Cretaceous. At about 30 feet (9 meters) long the new long-neck is also a relative pipsqueak.
In the Early Cretaceous the environment would have been semiarid bordering a large desert on the supercontinent of Gondwana Gallina said.
because previously discovered diplodocid relatives come from the Jurassic meaning L. laticauda may have been among the last of its line.
the earliest discovered specimens came from the rich Jurassic fossil beds in Colorado. They had also been discovered in Africa
Previous Patagonian fossil finds came from the upper or Late Cretaceous about 100 million to 66 million years ago.
and a forest ecologist with the U s. Geological Survey (USGS) in Three Rivers Calif. The results of the survey of 403 tree species around the world suggest that trees never suffer the ill effects of old age.
We d learned from an Antarctic vulcanologist (now there's a sexy job title) that Mount Erebus has surged recently in activity
Uncertainties remain Eric Steig a glacial geologist at the University of Washington who also studies Pine Island Glacier
Last month Steig and colleagues published a paper in the journal Science reporting that Pine Island Glacier's retreat slowed significantly in 2012 due to oceanographic changes related to La Niã a
and that the oceanographic conditions would need to be much colder than it was started before it its retreat to maintain stability Durand said.
The fossilized leaves spanned the impact from the last 1. 4 million years of the Cretaceous period through the first 800000 years of the Tertiary period.
while scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the US found the same Malassezia-like species from the Peru Trench in the Pacific ocean.
Sometimes people refer to geologic time. If you think about the amount of time it took for the continents to break apart that's geologic time.
It's on this scale that's so much deeper than a human life span so much longer than a human life span.
Stromatolites are part biologic and part geologic comprised of living cyanobacteria bound together with nonliving sediments like silt and sand.
The dinosaur lived during the Late Cretaceous between about 100 million and 66 million years ago.
The U s. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that there were approximately 150 glaciers in the area in 1850 and most of them were still there in 1910
and most likely for much longer possibly centuries said lead study author Joanne Johnson a geologist with The british Antarctic Survey.
which provide the first detailed look at Pine Island Glacier's history of surface thinning offer valuable information about past ice sheet behavior said Claire Todd a glacial geologist at Pacific Lutheran
and its residents according to Rosaly Lopes a volcanologist at NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena Calif. Lopes was not a consultant on the film.)
Monitoring Forests in Near Real-time Mapping deforestation The fine-grained map comes from the work of Matt Hansen a geographer at the University of Maryland
Geologists mostly think these form due to erosion from wind and water as well as from the weathering effects of salt and frost.
However lead author of the new study Jiå#Ã Bruthans a geologist at Charles University in Prague
when compared to geologic timescales. In just a few human lifetimes the environment can change abruptly
Biofuels are a type of combustible matter holding potential energy in the form of carbon that was bonded chemically in the recent past (when considered on a geologic time scale.
However in seeking to test this idea with temperature data oceanographer Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China in Qingdao
#Devonian period: Climate, Animals & Plants The Devonian period occurred from 416 million to 358 million years ago.
It was the fourth period of the Paleozoic era. It was preceded by the Silurian period and followed by the Carboniferous period.
It is often known as the Age of fishes #although significant events also happened in the evolution of plants the first insects and other animals.
The supercontinent Gondwana occupied most of the Southern hemisphere although it began significant northerly drift during the Devonian period.
Eventually by the later Permian period this drift would lead to collision with the equatorial continent known as Euramerica forming Pangaea.
The mountain building of the Caledonian Orogeny a collision between Euramerica and the smaller northern continent of Siberia continued in
what would later be Great britain the northern Appalachians and the Nordic mountains. Rapid erosion of these mountains contributed large amounts of sediment to lowlands and shallow ocean basins.
Sea levels were high with much of western North america under water. Climate of the continental interior regions was very warm during the Devonian period and generally quite dry.
The Devonian period was a time of extensive reef building in the shallow water that surrounded each continent and separated Gondwana from Euramerica.
Reef ecosystems contained numerous brachiopods still numerous trilobites tabulate and horn corals. Placoderms (the armored fishes) underwent wide diversification
Cartilaginous fish such as sharks and rays were common by the late Devonian. Devonian strata also contain the first fossil ammonites.
By the mid-Devonian the fossil record shows evidence that there were two new groups of fish that had true bones teeth swim bladders and gills.
The Ray-finned fish were the ancestors of most modern fish. Like modern fish their paired pelvic
The Lobe-finned fish were more common during the Devonian than the Ray fins but largely died out.
Plants which had begun colonizing the land during the Silurian period continued to make evolutionary progress during the Devonian.
By the end of the Devonian progymnosperms such as Archaeopteris were the first successful trees. Archaeopteris could grow up to 98 feet (30 meters) tall with a trunk diameter of more than 3 feet.
By the end of the Devonian period the proliferation of plants increased the oxygen content of the atmosphere considerably
This may have contributed to the cooling climate and the extinction event at the end of the Devonian. Arthropod fossils are concurrent with the earliest plant fossils of the Silurian.
Millipedes centipedes and arachnids continued to diversify during the Devonian period. The earliest known insect Rhyniella praecusor was a flightless hexapod with antennae and a segmented body.
Fossil Rhyniella are between 412 million and 391 million years old. Early tetrapods probably evolved from Lobe-finned fishes able to use their muscular fins to take advantage of the predator-free and food-rich environment of the new wetland ecosystems.
Dated from the mid-Devonian this fossil creature is considered to be the link between the lobe-finned fishes and early amphibians.
The close of the Devonian period is considered to be the second of the big five#mass extinction events of Earth s history.
The Kellwasser Event of the late middle Devonian was largely responsible for the demise of the great coral reefs the jawless fishes and the trilobites.
The Hangeberg Event at the Devonian/Carboniferous Boundary killed the Placoderms and most of the early ammonites.
Meanwhile in Antarctica scientists with the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program (ANDRILL) stumbled upon something bizarre
Won t End Drought Drought-weary residents of the Southern Plains do meteorologists ever have a welcome forecast for you:
but this looks like our surest bet for awhile#Gary Mcmanus Oklahoma s state climatologist told Climate Central.#
Work pioneered by Professor Sam Wasser at the University of Washington uses DNA profiling from seized ivory to trace it back to the geographical location within Africa from which the ivory was taken once roamed.
So some DNA types become much more common than others in defined geographical ranges which means that using similar DNA profiling techniques to those used in human forensic science the DNA from ivory provides a map leading back to the geographic area where those subpopulations with similar DNA profiles are found.
The modern leaf grouping was most similar to fossils from forests that grew 58 million years ago Crifã reports in the September 2014 issue of the journal Geology.
or minus 80 years said Samuel Munoz lead study author and a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Cahokia's location near the confluence of major rivers made it a popular waypoint for some 2000 years according to Munoz's study published April 10 in the journal Geology.
and Atmospheric administration) the Australian Bureau of Meteorology and other organizations around the world watch the changing conditions in the Pacific ocean
and the World meteorological organization are working to disseminate what we do know about El Niã o
and coordination between meteorologists and government agencies and officials who would need to prepare for potential impacts.#
In a somber scene-setter for the climate summit in New york this week the World meteorological organization the United Nation's meteorological office released a report showing that world carbon emissions in 2013 reached a record high and atmospheric
#Developing World Boasts Leading Women Conservationists (Op-Ed) Danielle Labruna is a geographic information systems specialist in the Conservation Support Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS.
As a geography teacher she was concerned about climate change and wanted to conserve Uganda's forests
Whether Nobel laureate or geography teacher women have made significant contributions to the planet and these accomplishments should make the world proud
Armed with a stack of topographic maps for plotting nests a stack of datasheets for recording survey information
The spikes are a side effect of the geology of the region: Folded surface rocks (shaped by tectonic forces) dip lower than the surrounding land creating long linear valleys filled with pine forests.
From space the pines appear as a darker shade of green than the surrounding agricultural fields according to the Earth Observatory.
See Photos of the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake The geologic discoveries transformed how we understand the Earth.
In 1964 earth scientists were swept away by the plate tectonic revolution which changed everything we know about how the earth works said Ross Stein a U s. Geological Survey geophysicist.
That insight was triggered by the Great Alaska earthquake 50 years ago. Solving the puzzle In the 1960s geologists thought straight up and down-down (vertical) faults bounded the edge of continents similar to the San andreas fault that slices through California.
In 1965 Frank Press who would become science adviser to four presidents and head of Caltech's Seismological Laboratory said a vertical fault extending from 9 to 125 miles (15 to 200 kilometers) deep caused the Great Alaska earthquake.
His model was published May 15 1965 in the Journal of Geophysical Research. One month later USGS geologist George Plafker proved him wrong.
As a USGS geologist Plafker had studied Alaska's geology each summer since 1953. But he was in Seattle when the 1964 earthquake struck.
After Plafker heard the Space Needle had swayed as the seismic waves raced past he called his boss in Menlo Park Calif. recommending an immediate response.
Plafker's work on the 1964 earthquake solved a key piece of the plate tectonic puzzle:
Before the 1964 earthquake we did not have a unifying theory of how the earth works said Peter Hauessler a USGS research geologist.
Plate tectonics is now a widely accepted model that explains everything from why earthquakes happen to how mountains grow.
But in 1964 geologists believed the Pacific Plate was rotating counterclockwise. In that scenario no new crust was created at underwater volcanic ridges nor was shoved old crust under continents at subduction zones.
The counterclockwise rotation was created a concept to explain the hundreds of miles of offset recently discovered along the San andreas fault.
The careful geologic mapping led by Plafker in the summer of 1964 would be key to solving the mystery of oceanic plates sliding around Earth's surface Stein said.
But geologists are concerned more about the hazards Alaskans face from more frequent smaller quakes along the Aleutian subduction zone between magnitude 7
and magnitude 8. State seismologist Michael West thinks Alaskans have grown too lax about earthquake hazards.
Since the 1964 earthquake geologists have learned that the speed of earthquake shaking plays an important role in destruction due to liquefaction.
In the new study researchers analyzed the hydrologic topographic climatic and sedimentary features of Mummy Lake and the surrounding cliff area.
See Images of Mummy Lake in Mesa verde The fundamental problem with Mummy Lake is that it's on a ridge said study lead author Larry Benson an emeritus research scientist for the U s. Geological Survey and adjunct curator
and his colleagues first analyzed the topography and hydrology of the ridge using GPS surveys high-resolution imagery and digital elevation models.
Ships today are at risk too said study researcher Martin Jutzeler a volcanologist at the University of Southampton in the United kingdom. Water intakes on ships can become damaged by pumice stalling the engine Jutzeler told Live Science.
Geologists use ash beds from volcanoes to date layers of rock. But there is little understanding of how pumice rafts
How each community responds depends on its unique mix of people and geography. This story is part of a Climate Central series that looks at how communities are facing the challenges ahead.
and a U s. Geological Survey staff scientist who studies climate change on the Navajo Nation.#
because although 25 weather stations exist across the reservation their records are incomplete.##oemany stopped operating in the early 1980s so there are large areas of the reservation where we have no record of
Wayne Trivelpiece an Antarctic penguin researcher with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric administration's Southwest Fisheries science Center based in La jolla Calif. agrees that climate change is a serious threat to these and other penguin populations around the world.
and habitat loss and that a greater understanding of its distribution and abundance is needed throughout its geographic range.
They have helped also rediscover species thought to be locally extinct or outside their known geographical range.
Carbon dating tests showed that the vessel was last caulked with wads of bark in 1400.
which can act like prehistoric weather stations recording everything from precipitation to wind patterns to atmospheric pressure
There are these persistent 20-year periods where there are extreme shifts in climate system the study's head author Ian Goodwin a marine climatologist
and marine geologist at Macquarie University in Sydney told Live Science. We show that the sailing canoe in its basic form would have been able to make these voyages purely through downwind sailing.
In the past six years funding for part of the network the collection of air samples in flasks has kept not pace with cost increases said Ed Dlugokencky an atmospheric chemist with NOAA's Earth sciences Research Laboratory
And that means the buckets may hold a full range of species from the ancient Miocene epoch forest.
However impoverished people tend to move into such territory in search of resources. 10 Deadly Diseases That Hopped Across Species Poverty drives people to expand their range of activities to stay alive plunging deeper into the forest to expand the geographic as well as species
it suggests that regrowth is still in the geographic minority compared to deforestation and logging.
000 hectares, shrinking the total forest cover in Xishuangbanna to less than 50%and that of primary rainforests to 3. 6%1, 2. In Xishuangbanna, hydrological systems have been hardest hit.
Temperature and precipitation data from meteorological stations in Xishuangbanna show that the region has been warming since the 1960s, with less rainfall and more severe droughts5.
says John Burrows, a co-investigator on the OCO project and science director at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford,
Michael Freilich, head of NASA's Earth-science division, has sent the white paper out for review and says he will make a decision possibly in May.
It might seem that the $150 million recently added to NASA's fiscal-year 2009 budget for Earth science by Congress,
a US Geological Survey land-mapping mission that NASA is procuring, and Glory, a mission due to be launched later this year to studyaerosols
And other new Earth-science missions recommended as priorities by the National Academies also need to get started.
As tectonic plates in the crust move and collide, the crust fractures and these clathrates release gases,
says Susan Kieffer a geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sodium isn't the proof of a liquid ocean,
according to a non-peer-reviewed report from the US Geological Survey (USGS). More than two-thirds contained levels exceeding the Environmental protection agency's level of concern for the protection of fish-eating mammals,
and Animal Use in the Life sciences meets in Rome. http//www. aimgroup. eu/2009/WC7 31 august-4 september The World meteorological organization hosts the Third world Climate Conference in Geneva. http://www
and the difficulty in obtaining local geographical information, says Raymond Mccord, an ecologist at the Oak ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee,
An earthquake measured by the US Geological Survey as a magnitude 8. 0 triggered a tsunami off Tonga
Peering back into the geological record the researchers realized that there were frequent volcanic eruptions 8, 500-10,500 years ago in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt a region close to the cradle of maize domestication that dumped heavy metals into the local soils.
They've brought to bear pollen analysis, geomorphology and archaeology all together in one programme. There have been hints of vegetation changes all along,
They were spread over several southern coastal valleys, each with slightly different topography and geological possibilities,
'However, only about half of the money from Congress is new the rest must be gleaned from other NASA Earth science accounts.
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