EGU Blogs

Retired blogs

Green Tea and Velociraptors

Gender confusion in Confuciusornis? Not any more!

February 1, 2013

Among the many issues with the fossil record is the case of gender identification. In modern organisms, it is usually pretty easy to tell which members of a particular species are the males and which are the females. This can either be through consistently perving on them to figure it out during copulation, or some aspect of their morphology, such as antlers, or you know, a penis or vagina. When i ...[Read More]

VolcanicDegassing

Sea-floor spreading, on land

February 1, 2013
Sea-floor spreading, on land

One piece of evidence that helped to establish the theory of Plate Tectonics in the early-1960’s was the recognition of patterns of magnetisation in the basalts of the seafloor that were symmetrical about the global oceanic ridge system. Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews recognised that this pattern had to be fixed in place as the lavas, that were erupted along the ocean ridge, cooled through ...[Read More]

Green Tea and Velociraptors

A new feathered dinosaur – worth getting ruffled for?

January 31, 2013

Two new feathered dinosaur articles appeared in the latest edition of Nature Communications; one on gender identification in a well-known theropod (the meat noshing ones), and the subject of a forthcoming blog post, and another on a new feathered fiend from, surprise surprise, China. I normally really don’t like writing about theropods, especially of the feathered variety, as it just seems l ...[Read More]

GeoSphere

Geology Photo of the Week #19 – Jan 27 – Feb 2

January 30, 2013

Hi Everyone, Sorry this post is a bit late. Things have been crazy the last few days in the lab. I am trying to get enough done in the next few weeks to submit an abstract to a conference and I still have quite a long way to go. The 19th photo of week was taken by me at the Hogan Sand Pit just north of Ottawa near Cantley, Quebec. It is a pretty interesting sedimentological feature called a “ ...[Read More]

Geology for Global Development

Resources: ‘World We Want’ Discussion forums

January 30, 2013

It’s been a while since we posted anything in our resources series. This week we direct you to a group of discussion forums on the ‘world we want’ website. They have discussion boards covering a range of development themes, some of which are particularly relevant to GfGD; water, energy and environmental sustainability. They direct you to articles and blogs, as well as facilitatin ...[Read More]

Green Tea and Velociraptors

DINOSAUR! But what does it mean..?

January 29, 2013

Palaeontology probably isn’t the most difficult of sciences, but it does incorporate aspects of chemistry, biology, and physics to a certain degree, as with many other geoscientific disciplines. Palaeontologists are also well known for the mysterious and unintelligible ‘science-speak’ that they use in research papers, fueled by this combination of a multitude of various sciences, ...[Read More]

Geology for Global Development

Guest Blog: From the President of the International Association for Geoethics

January 28, 2013

Prof. Jesús Martínez-Frías is the head of the planetology and habitability department in the ‘centro de astrobiologica’ in Madrid. He is also the new president of the International Association for Geoethics (IAGETH). We did a short piece promoting another geoethics organisation in December, and here Jesús elaborates on the history and significance of geoethics… Although Geoethics ...[Read More]

GeoSphere

Guest Lecture – Dr. Tim Lowenstein

January 25, 2013
Guest Lecture – Dr. Tim Lowenstein

Our department was recently lucky enough to have Dr. Tim Lowenstein from SUNY Binghamton come give a guest lecture on the changes in the chemistry of seawater throughout geologic time. Originally, we thought that the major ion chemistry in the past was more or less the same as it is today. However, over the last 10 years this long standing belief has been challenged by many researchers and champio ...[Read More]