Geology

Some Good News: Yellowstone Won't Blow Up This Year

From Australian wildfires to COVID-19 to murder hornets to race wars in Manhattan, 2020 looks to be a challenging year. It could still get worse, but science shows it won't be due to Yellowstone blowing its top.  Yellowstone is one of those scenarios ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jun 4 2020 - 11:51am

The Kerguelen Plateau And Formation Of Continents

How did the continents form? It's a complex question, and no firm answers will be coming soon, but the oceanic plateau of the Kerguelen Islands may provide part of the answer, according to a new paper. From a geological point of view, it is the Earth& ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 22 2020 - 12:23pm

Triassic Period: Bad Things Come In Threes

Bad things come in threes, it is said, and nothing shows that more than The Carnian Age; the first stage of three in the mass extinction era of the Late Triassic Epoch 228 to 217 million years ago. It had three features; dramatic climate change with much h ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 14 2020 - 10:55am

You Can't Trust Volcanoes

Don't be fooled by those tourist volcanoes that reliably produce small basaltic lava eruptions. A new study shows they hide the same chemically diverse magmas in their underground plumbing systems as volcanoes that generate explosive activity. Some vo ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 29 2020 - 8:57am

East Kootenay Geology

The East Kootenay region on the south-eastern edge of British Columbia is a land of colossal mountains against a clear blue sky. That is not strictly true, of course, as this area does see its fair share of rain and temperature extremes — but visiting in ...

Article - Heidi Henderson - Oct 19 2020 - 8:30am

Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction Triggered Switch To Warm-Bloodedness

ome 250 million years ago, in the time when life was recovering from The greatest mass extinction of all time, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago, killed 95 percent of life, and the very few survivors faced a turbulent world, repeat ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 19 2020 - 10:26am

The Tsunami At Ancient Tel Dor

Along the coast of Tel Dor, a maritime city in northwest Israel occupied from the Middle Bronze II period,  2000 BC, through the Crusader period, there is a marine shell and sand layer from nearly 10,000 years ago, but it's in the middle of a large an ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 24 2020 - 10:56am

Science In The Mists Of K'un Lun

If you're a reader of geography or a student of eastern philosophy, you may have seen the name K'un Lun.  It is the name of a mountain range in western China and borders the northern edge of Tibet (1) and is also a name for 'paradise' i ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Jan 17 2021 - 11:30am

The Roof Of The World Has Been Raised Nearly Half A Mile

The Tibetan plateau covers nearly 1,600,000 square miles. With an average altitude of nearly 14,000 feet, Tibet is called the Roof of the World for good reason. It contains the world's two highest peaks, Mount Everest and K2, and the vast Himalayan mo ...

Article - News Staff - May 31 2021 - 12:39pm