Earth articles from August 1998

Earth archives from August 1998

Small beginnings: pint-sized primates show our ancestors' ancestors got started in Asia.(primate fossils found in China)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Pint-sized primates show our ancestors' ancestors got started in Asia. They were shorter than your pinky, lighter than a golf ball, and equipped with a bottomless pit for a stomach. Recently discovered, the forty-five-million-year-old...

Dating real jerks.(lichens reveal prehistoric earthquake record)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Fungus coatings on rock pin down quake ages. Rock-loving lichens seem an unlikely storehouse for earthquake information. But two geologists are using these tiny plants to reveal the prehistoric record of major tremors. And this novel...

At the drop of a worm.(ancient worm droppings challenge theory of Cambrian explosion of life)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Digested meals mark an early start for guts. Six hundred million years ago a worm left its mark in the seafloor: a winding trail of tiny pellets it had tidily deposited after enjoying a good meal. Scientists have long thought that animals...

Buried treasures.(high-grade copper found on Pacific Ocean floor)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Digging below the hot-water vents and strange sea creatures that mark the dark depths of the Pacific Ocean floor, geologists have struck upon a bright new discovery: a rich zone of high-grade copper. This unexpected deep-sea treasure could...

Getting the dirt on land life: fossilized soil holds first land grabbers.(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Fossilized soil holds first land grabbers. Jens Gutzmer and Nicolas J. Beukes were seeing red: pebbles of rust-colored hematite, an iron-rich mineral scattered throughout the two-billion-year-old South African dirt. But as they looked a...

Earth chronicles.(natural disasters from 20-Feb-1998 to 19-Apr-1998)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... This earth science dateline covers the period from February 20 to April 19. February 20 -- A magnitude 6.1 earthquake jolts Islamabad in northern Pakistan. * February 23 -- Torrential rainstrorms turn parts of California into rivers of...

Deciding factors.(archeological finds in Chinese cave illuminate early human behavior)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... An old Chinese cave reveals advanced human minds. Human behavior doesn't fossilize. But luckily the products of human action taken long ago in ancient China do. Deep inside a Chinese mountain cave, animal remains and stone tools are...

Hidden volcanoes.(eight craters from Kansas to Illinois result of underground volcanism)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Mysterious craters in the American Midwest may have blown their tops. "People have argued back and forth over these individual structures till they were blue in the face," says John Luczaj. If geology had an X-File this would be it: eight...

Shakes without quakes.(storms and winds may cause Earth to vibrate)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Stormy winds may ring our planet like a bell. Earthquakes may not be the only force that's capable of shaking the globe. A group of Japanese researchers have found that Earth continuously vibrates -- like a ringing bell -- and the source...

Underworld connections.(scientists beginning to understand the San Andreas fault, California)
August 1, 1998... The hidden weaknesses of the San Andreas fault run very, very deep. When it slipped in 1906, San Francisco got clobbered. When it slipped in 1989, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics called it quits for the night -- the only...

Romancing the stone.(searching for ancient Egyptian quarries)
August 1, 1998... Rocks from ancient Egypt built two empires, and now a geologist is tracing them back to their source. Squatting with a cup of steaming black tea and dog-tired from the ten-hour ride across the desert in a Russian jeep, Jim Harrell hung on...

Asian invasion.(Asian dinosaurs replaced North American dinosaurs)
August 1, 1998... New American dinosaur fossils tell of a takeover by visitors from the Far East. A late-October snowstorm has put paleontologist Jim Kirkland behind schedule. To make up time, our little band of dinophiles zooms down highways and bounces...

When life got legs.(evolution of genes that code for appendages)(includes related article on appendages in fish)
August 1, 1998... Fins, legs, and wings may all exist thanks to a squirming worm from long ago, whose bequest has allowed animals to overrun the planet. Grace Panganiban dosed the lifeless worm, still a larva the size of a rice grain, with a liquid...

Heaps of confusion.(formation of Mima mounds still a mystery)
August 1, 1998... They're all over the world. Nobody knows where they came from or why they look the way they do. If you find out, call Ron Sletten at once. Ron Sletten Tromps through the scrubby grass of Mima Prairie, happy as a kid in an amusement park....

Poles apart.(the Arctic and Antarctic)(Illustration)
August 1, 1998... The polar regions defy simple definition. The very qualities that set them poles apart from the rest of the world fail to translate into the sort of distinct boundaries that define oceans or nations. Standing on the edge of the Arctic Circle...

And the waters prevailed.(geologists believe Mediterranean overflowed into Black Sea)(includes related article on using nuclear blasts in geological research)(Cover Story)
August 1, 1998... TWO GEOLOGISTS TRACE NOAH'S FLOOD TO THE VIOLENT BIRTH OF THE BLACK SEA. In the summer of 1993, with the Cold War only a memory, Russian and American scientists loaded equipment aboard a converted Russian fishing vessel and set off to...

Windfall.(thunderstorm winds called downbursts)
August 1, 1998... In every severe thunderstorm there lurks a plunging river of air that can flatten forests and crash airplanes. I was living an earth scientist's dream, standing in Monument Valley, Arizona, marveling at geologic formations set against a...

Puffed-up stuff.(smectite clay swells and has many uses)(Brief Article)
August 1, 1998... Swelling clay expands to fill a host of mostly grubby roles. It's a word you want to scrub down with lye soap. Smectite. The very consonants seem sweaty, humdrum, caked with workaday crud. And so they should. Smectite is a kind of...

Island overture.(Staffa, Scotland, unique because of column-shaped rocks)
August 1, 1998... As our ship finally edged closer to the island, Captain Ingemar Utbult left the bridge to retrieve something from his cabin. How strange, I thought, that he had to leave just as the scenery was getting good. We were fast approaching the...

The Mistaken Extinction: Dinosaur Evolution and the Origin of Birds.
August 1, 1998... The Mistaken Extinction: Dinosaur Evolution and the Origin of Birds, by Lowell Dingus and Timothy Rowe, W. H. Freeman & Company, New York, 1998, 332 pages, hardcover, $34.95. You can find books about the extinction of the dinosaurs. You...

World on a disk. (Software Review)(Evaluation)
August 1, 1998... Physical Geology, two CD-ROMs for Windows, by Hopkins Technology, 421 Hazel Lane, Hopkins MN 55343-7166, 612-931-9376, http://www. hoptechno.com, $49.95. Any multimedia project that attempts to present a detailed survey of geology is...

Gemstones of North America.
August 1, 1998... Gemstones of North America, Vol. III, by John Sinkankas, Geoscience Press, Inc., Tucson, 1997, 528 pages, hardcover, $65. From actinolite to zircon, this book is an updated reference to gemstones found in North America. Sinkankas, a gem...