Earth articles from October 1997

Earth archives from October 1997

Tracking pterosaurs.(Paleontology)
October 1, 1997... Martin Lockley expected trouble. As the paleontologist stepped onto a stage last October to face a few hundred of his fellow scientists, he knew some of them weren't going to believe what he was about to say. Lockley was there to talk about...

Antarctic jigsaw: the southernmost continent didn't quite fit together. A new piece of crust may solve that problem.(Geophysics)
October 1, 1997... Sometimes a missing puzzle piece has fallen to the floor. At other times it's slipped between the sofa cushions. For the people trying to figure out how Antarctica was put together, the missing part of the puzzle has been hidden beneath a...

Kimberella's slippers: a lowly fossil leaves her handsome prints on an old seafloor - and the trail points toward the dim beginnings of modern life.(Cover Story)
October 1, 1997... Destiny has many disguises. It can arrive as a ringing telephone, a sultry glance across a crowded room, a voice in a hospital waiting room. For Ben Waggoner, destiny took the form of boulders tumbling toward him down the face of a...

The ultimate missing link. (research on the evolution of life in the Precambrian era)(Cover Story)
October 1, 1997... Eyes opened for the first time just over half a billion years ago -- not just two at a time, either, but sometimes five per creature. Jaws also closed, claws snapped, legs stepped, and heads turned. All in all, thirty-seven body features...

Quake safari. (earthquake research in Botswana)
October 1, 1997... Teddy and I were sitting about twenty yards apart. We had been like that for more than an hour, hunched up against the trunks of a couple of mopani trees as we waited for the herd of elephants to leave the grove we were in. They had moved...

Tropics on ice: from the top of the Andes mountains, Lonnie Thompson has pulled up clues showing how the tropics respond to global climate change. (geologist)
October 1, 1997... Lonnie Thompson and his crew turned their worried eyes to the east, where the ominous sound of thunder rumbled over the horizon. Bundled in parkas, goggled against snow glare, and shod in felt-lined permafrost boots, they were protected from...

Battle of the bones: fossil lovers clash over the right to own the past.(includes related articles)
October 1, 1997... It's an issue that splits the world of fossil hunting down the middle. Every year, on hundreds of millions of acres of public land in the western United States, the forces of wind and water uncover a fresh crop of fossilized bones....

Send in the clouds: by reading the right sequence of clouds and wind, you can tell where and when it's going to rain.
October 1, 1997... It's 1910. In the small farm settlement that is your home, all the townspeople marvel at your ability to check the heavens for signs that rain will fall. This year your skills are needed more than ever. A dry winter has just ended, leaving...

Minerals in disguise. (pseudomorphs)(Elements)
October 1, 1997... When Earth's hand rocks the cradle in which new minerals are formed, it can cause some serious mix-ups. A crystal can have the shape of one mineral but actually possess the chemical makeup of an entirely different species. These...

Pointed desert. (Namburg National Park, Australia)(includes travel information)
October 1, 1997... Jutting out of a sea of golden sand in Western Australia the limestone pillars called the Pinnacles are hard to miss. Some of the misshapen columns show the saw-shaped profile of what could, with a little imagination, be the teeth of a large...