Geobulletin alpha

Among Geologists, Older Is Often Better 

Older geologists are better geologists, according to a 3 March Wall Street Journal article. John W. Miller reports from South Africa that the old guys (and they're still almost all men) know a lot of little tricks they don't teach in school any more, like looking for gold in the dirt of termite mounds, excavated from meters below the surface. "Mining executives say that while they chuckle about the quirks of older geologists, they recognize the business value of their memory of previous [...]

Games Played in the Dirt: Baseball and Cricket 

It's that time of year again . . . baseball time! And as with so many things in modern civilization, geology has a fundamental part. In the case of baseball, the game is played on dirt, and not just any old dirt but a specifically engineered soil. I've had this article on baseball dirt up for some years now, but the soils of cricket wickets are a matter of intense interest to the engineers of that popular sport, too. Baseball rubbing mud — Geology Guide

“The evolution of creationism,” by David Montgomery 

The cover story in the November issue of GSA Today was by David Montgomery, MacArthur “genius” award winner and author of Dirt. Montgomery has a new book out on creationism and “flood geology,” and the article is a précis of the historical roots of creationism that appears in that book. The article is titled “The Evolution of Creationism,” and the book it’s derived from is The Rocks Don’t Lie. I’ve

Monday macrobug: big green worm 

Found this caterpillar in the dirt the other day outside my house… Here it is (in the palm of my leather work gloves – the width of a finger may be seen blurrily in the background): I spent some time looking for matches on Bug Guide and in Garden Insects of North America by Whitney Cranshaw. The book wasn’t as helpful as the website this time. Looks a lot like

The Seymour Blob: Putting something in your head from the ground beneath your feet 

As you may already know, the Houston Museum of Natural Science has long been digging up wonderful Permian fossils in Seymour, Texas. Curator of Paleontology Dr. Robert T. Bakker and his team of hot, tired and pink (from the dirt) … Continue reading

Planting Trees, Saving Salmon 

One weekend late in 2011, Jade and I decided to get our hands dirty on behalf of the local salmon. Then we welcomed them back home!Many readers will have heard of, or even visited, Muir Woods National Monument, a spectacular stand of old growth redwoods a few short miles north of San Francisco. The forest is watered by Redwood Creek, which originates close by at the top of Mount Tamalpais, the dominant landmark of Marin County. The creek nourishes the Monument before completing its short, [...]

The Geographic Center 

While returning from a recent recon trip out in the middle of nowhere, driving back to Highway 50 on another endless Nevada dirt road — in this case the Monitor Valley Road, AKA the Old Belmont or Belmont Road — MOH and I came across this sign marking the approximate location of the Geographic Center of Nevada.I say approximate because several different lat-lon locations can be found here

“Dirt! The Movie” screening at NOVA Annandale 

Wednesday, October 05, 2011 3:00 PM-5:00 PM in CN 119 on the Annandale campus of NOVA, sponsored by the NOVA Green

Just Another Day in the Sun... 

This week was, unfortunately, a rainy week and most of our dig tours transformed into all-day museum tours. Still, we had a lot of fun playing games such as Dino Hunt and Dino Jeopardy. All of the kids were great sports and we even brought out our dig boxes from the back so that they could have some experience digging.  Matt's 1/2 day tour Matt had a half-day fossil adventure tour with a great family from Winnipeg. They found a Squalicorax (shark) tooth and a tibiotarsus (leg [...]

Another Mystery Skull 

It took me awhile to figure out what this guy is. After I got back from the hospital, my assistant, Ashlee, gave me a mystery skull that her parents (in California) sent to her. They found this skull on their property, and I cleaned it up as best I could. There's still some dirt and dried skin on the mandibular symphysis. The ascending processes of the dentary are broken off, and all of the

Fishing for Fossils 

   Wednesday was my first dig tour of this week. I had a large and great group full of enthusiastic kids who were eager to learn. The first fossil was found almost immediately: within 20 minutes of arriving there! Two young boys found a possible fish rib fragment with a hole in it. We hypothesized that it was a tooth mark as the hole was on both sides as if someone (or something) had bit down on both sides. Possibly a mosasaur trying to have some fish for lunch! The second [...]

Dad, Can We Talk? (Dirt Pony) 

"Papá, podemos... ¿Podemos hablar?""Papá, soy... Soy herbívoro." / "¡¿Queeé?! ¡Fuera! ¡Fuera de esta casa!""¡Tú no eres mi hijo! ¡No tengo hijo!"En Dirt Pony abordan en esta tira publicada en abril de 2010 la problemática existente en las comunidades tiranosaurianas cuando algún joven da ese valiente paso que es "salir del

Does dirt have the same value as a human? Some thoughts on Bolivian Mother Earthism 

From FoxNews: U.N. Prepares to Debate Whether ‘Mother Earth’ Deserves Human Rights Status United Nations diplomats on Wednesday will set aside pressing issues of international peace and security to devote an entire day debating the rights of “Mother Earth.” A bloc of mostly socialist governments lead by Bolivia have put the issue on the General

Games Played in the Dirt: Baseball and Cricket 

It's that time of year again . . . baseball time! And as with so many things in modern civilization, geology has a fundamental part. In the case of baseball, the game is played on dirt, and not just any old dirt but a specifically engineered soil. I've had this article on baseball dirt up for some years now, but today I got wind of one about the soils of cricket wickets. Naturally soil is a matter of intense interest to the engineers of that popular sport, too. Baseball rubbing mud — [...]

Games Played in the Dirt: Baseball and Cricket 

It's that time of year again . . . baseball time! And as with so many things in modern civilization, geology has a fundamental part. In the case of

Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations, by David Montgomery 

The final book I read over the break was Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations, by David Montgomery. Montgomery got a MacArthur “Genius” Award for his soil work, and I use an article he wrote for GSA Today (2007) as one of the assigned readings for my Environmental Geology course. In Dirt, he lays out the case for protecting civilization by protecting soils. Attention is given to soil-forming processes, and rates

California Earthquake Radar 

Reference Hot in the earthquake news today is a presentation which shows how an Easter earthquake is still shoving dirt around in California. Here we have a messy picture showing the motion.  It's a dog's breakfast of motion in all directions.  In the earthquake, some ground moved the opposite direction from the main fault.  This can be expected at various gaps.  The news says some gaps of

Deep Ocean Heat is Melting Antarctic Ice 

Like dirt swept under the carpet, it appears that much of the human-made heat produced over the last century has been getting soaked up by the world's oceans, and sinking into deep

‘Trust, but verify’ 

 The spills of coal ash in Ohio and Tennessee, and the aluminum refining sludge tsunami in Hungary remind us that environmental diligence is an expectation and a necessity every day.  We can have regulations intended to protect humans and our environment, but they are meaningless unless we each embrace them, and unless they are enforced by the power of inspection.  What was it that President Ronald Reagan said to the then Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev during a treaty negotiation? [...]

Geology Links for September 25th, 2010 

Links from del.icio.us, tagged with geology for September 25th, 2010: Dirt! The Movie Exploring Earth Visualizations www.<b>ucmp</b>.<b>berkeley.edu</b>/geology/tecall1_4.mov Evidence for Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics Lab Lesson UC Museum of Paleontology NASA Earth Observatory Kinetic City: Shape It Up http://www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk/vtc/rocks/eng/Introduction/default.htm Minerals WA Rockie – Our Flat Planet Geologic Atlas of the United States Science [...]