Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois - ESCONI

New Finding of Cave Art in Portugal

From Portugese News:

The president of the Portuguese Association of Archeological Research (APIA), Nuno Ribeiro, revealed Monday having found rock art on the island of Terceira, supporting his believe that human occupation of the Azores predates the arrival of the Portuguese by many thousands of years, Lusa reported.

“We have found a rock art site with representations we believe can be dated back to the Bronze Age,”  Ribeiro told Lusa in Ponta Delgada, at a presentation in University of the Azores on the topic of early human occupation of the Azores.

 

Hardin County Fluorospar Festival

From the ESCONI Yahoo Group: (hat tip Dave Carlson)

Coming up Oct 4 - 6 in Rosiclare, in extreme southeastern Illinois. Includes an open house at the American Fluorite Museum.

For more info, see http://www.hardinco untyil.org/ festivals_ hardincountyfluo rsparfestival. htm

The European Appalachians

Scotland to host International Appalachian Trail talks 

For the first time Scotland will host the annual conference of the International Appalachian Trail.

Inverness has been suggested as the venue for the event next year.

The IAT is an attempt to connect treks in the Appalachian Mountains of North America with others in Europe and Africa.

The areas share geology going back a billion years through a process of ancient supercontinents forming, breaking up and forming again....

The Appalachian Mountains of North America lie between Flagg Mountain, in Alabama, in the US, and the north end of Belle Isle in Canada's Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada....

... However, the Appalachian terrain continues as what are known as the Caledonides of Ireland and Scotland.

Around one billion years ago Scotland and the north-east of the US and eastern Canada were close neighbours on the supercontinent of Rodinia.

Rodinia broke apart around 720 million years ago, but Scotland and parts of North America remained neighbours on the eastern edge of a continent called Laurentian.

Around 400 million years ago England, Wales and south-east Ireland on the continent of Avalonia, and Norway and the rest of Scandinavia on the continent of Baltica collided to form the Caledonian-Appalachian mountain chain.

Further movements of land masses followed.

Scotland was finally separated from the north-east Appalachians around 50 million years ago by the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean.

 

 

Dinosaur Fed on Flying Dinosaur

Via CBC:

Paleontologists at the University of Alberta have found evidence inside the stomachs of two fossilized dinosaurs of the species Sinocalliopteryx gigas that suggests the raptor-like predator did not shy away from feeding on its own kind, hunting small flying dinosaurs for food.

Swarm of Earthquakes in S. California

From Christian Science Monitor:

... As to what caused this week's swarm, researchers say it has to do with the region's distinctive geology.

"Compared to the rest of California, it's thinner crust, and hotter, and [has] more fluids," says Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, Calif. She describes the imperial Valley as "one big bowl of sediment."

"Those would likely be reasons that contribute to this," Ms. Jones says. "But we don't yet have the details of the physics."

The earth's thin crust in the region, and the proximity of hot magma beneath it, relates to the Imperial Valley's location at the top end of a fault in which tectonic plates are moving apart from one another to form the Gulf of California. The Brawley area, 100 miles east of San Diego, is "like the very end of a ridge that's trying to spread open. It's actually probably giving up on spreading open," Jones says....

 

Field Museum's Podcast: What the Fish?

The Field Museum has a new podcast called What the Fish?

"... 2.5 million specimens don't collect themselves!

The Field Museum's Division of Fishes houses approximately 2.5 million specimens of fish, including whole specimens in alcohol, skeletal specimens, tissue samples, and cleared and stained material. That is a lot of fishes! But the fishes did not just arrive overnight; scientists and researchers have been adding to the collection at The Field Museum since 1894....

Fish of the Week: Araripelepidotus temnurus:

©2012 The Field Museum.

 

Oldest-ever bugs found preserved in amber

From Discover Magazine: (hat tip Floyd)

Three tiny creatures from the Triassic period are the oldest ever to be discovered preserved in amber - about 100 million years older than any other amber arthropod ever collected.... 

... But even though arthropods are more than 400 million years old, until now the oldest record of the animals in amber dates to about 130 million years. The newly-discovered arthropods take that date back to 230 million years.

About 70,000 of the amber droplets, most between two and six millimeters long, were screened for inclusions...

Two of the specimens are new species of mites, named Triasacarus fedelei and Ampezzoa triassica.