Geobulletin alpha

Wild Proboscidea in Oklahoma 

I’m just back from a 10-day research trip to Oklahoma. I’ll have more pictures to post soon, of all kinds of cool things. One of the most surprising and interesting things I discovered on the trip was Proboscidea – not the mammalian order of elephants and their relatives, but the genus of plants with wacky

Mastodon Tooth 

This mastodon tooth is on display at the Falls of the Ohio State Park Interpretive Center. A learned a couple of things from the display. Mastodons differ from mammoths in their teeth were used to eat more trees (branches, twigs, bark) while the mammoths ate more grasses. Also mammoths are more similar to today's elephants with their longer tusks and more distinct heads. The mastodon has

Physics - High Energy Part 2 

The highest energy thing we have going here is the rotation of the Earth, followed by the radiation heat deep in the Mantle.  I don't know how many atomic bombs they are, or how many seconds of the Sun, but it is huge.  Man isn't even the flea on these elephants.  The orbit of the Moon is somewhere there, and that controls the tides. For the rotation, two things leech off it - ocean

Crocodiles vs. elephants 

I’ve been reading The Guinness Book of Animal Facts and Feats (Wood 1982) again. Here’s what he says on pages 98-99 about the strength of crocodiles, and what happens when they bite off more than they can chew. The strength of the crocodile is quite appalling. Deraniyalga (1939) mentions a crocodile in N. Australia which

Four Day Camping Safari to Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater 

This was my first camping safari and I really enjoyed it. The biggest thrill was being with friends and Helen on their first safari. It is a fabulous experience and one that anyone with the means should undertake.Wish I had time to caption more for each of these photos but our trek up to the top of Kilimanjaro begins in a few hours. We met out lead guide James last night and he will do us well, I am sure. Cheers. A huge baobab tree The scarp of the East Africa Rift with Lake Manyara [...]

Tales from Tanzania: Wandering after dark & the trees that make elephants and baboons drunk 

Jambo! Now that we have a good Internet connection to the Internet (there aren’t a lot of Internet cafes in the middle of the Serengeti), I thought I should update you on our adventures! The second evening in Tanzania, a … Continue reading

Loch Ness Monster: Mystery solved? 

Loch Ness monster theories have ranged from elephants to seismicity. Do we finally have the answer? Back in July, geologist Luigi Piccardi proposed an intriguing new possibility – is the Great Glen Fault system, which runs for 62 miles beneath … Continue reading

The elephants in the room - monster earthquakes 

Article Very interesting methodology.  When we did geophysics in Lake Ontario, we saw massively disturbed sediments.  The earthquake has to be about M7 and above to do this, simply because you need a high PGV. An M7 under Hamilton may have a return period of 1000 or 10000 years.   Uncertainties here are a factor of 10, just like climate modelling.  :)  I tend to think in terms of 1000 years

Crocodilians Dispersed Differently Than Mammals in the Americas 

The uplift of the Isthmus of Panama 2.6 million years ago formed a land-bridge that has long thought to be the crucial step in the interchange of animals between the Americas, including armadillos and giant sloths moving up into North America and relatives of modern horses, rabbits, foxes, pigs, cats, dogs, and elephants down into South America. However, in the March 2013 issue of the

The Buzz on Elephants 

African-born, Oxford-trained biologist Lucy King recently won an award for a promising solution to a longstanding problem in Africa—elephants raiding

Geological State Symbols Across the US - #2 Alaska 

The state for this month is Alaska. Here are the stats:                                                        Year EstablishedState Mineral: [...]

DINOSAURS! From Cultural to Pop Culture - ~800 BC 

Prehistoric Times The next stop along our travels through time is not a dinosaur stop but an important one none-the-less. I placed it at ~800 BC because that is the estimated date that Homer wrote the Odyssey. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is making his way back home and along the way lands on the Island of the Cyclopes, where he meets Polyphemus (pictured right). Homer then goes on to describe the cyclops, which is usually what we would assume a cyclops to look like. They are typically very [...]

The Human Journey: Part 3 

Below is the third and final part of the human evolution story. Parts 1 and 2 can be found in the previous two posts. ___________________________________Touching down once more in the time machine, we find ourselves surrounded by now familiar grassland expanses. The monotonous scene is punctuated only by a mud-lined waterhole, which at the moment is hosting a herd of Elephas recki, the same giant proboscideans from the second act. Standing in the shallows close by, seemingly oblivious to the [...]

Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: A woolly mammoth tooth (Late Pleistocene of Holmes County, Ohio) 

Since we had a mastodon tooth as our last Fossil of the Week, paleontological symmetry demands we have a mammoth tooth this week. The fossil above also comes from the productive bogs of Holmes County a few miles south of Wooster. Our tooth is from a young woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). These were true elephants,

Lend me a Helping Trunk 

Researchers at the University of Cambridge recently found that elephants understand and can display complex levels of cooperation to reach a common

Elephants Crash at Mining Indaba 

The Mining Indaba is the great South African event on the mining calendar.  Here is a link to a report on the clash of elephants at the conference.  We quote: The lack of clarity about the mining investment environment in southern Africa meant that [South African] Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu had to maintain a stiff upper lip

A new ancestry for elephants 

Changes in names and taxonomical classification are a common occurrence as our knowledge of species living and extinct expands. In fact, around 10% of all taxonomic names are changed every year (Nimis, 2001). The changes are mainly in the realm of microbiology where morphology is difficult to apply, but rarely in the realm of charismatic megafauna, e.g. elephants.However, there has been a

The elephants in the room at ScienceOnline 2011 

The undercurrents and unresolved issues at ScienceOnline 2011, that I feel are going to be an important component of online conversations in the next 12 months. Continue reading

Senckenberg Elephant Wall 

The Senckenberg museum in Frankfurt has a great wall of elephants about 40 meters long… I composited a bunch of photos into a flat view, detail below is that first skull on the far right (Deinotherium giganteum). Download the big original by clicking the first

Senckenberg Elephant Wall 

The Senckenberg museum in Frankfurt has a great wall of elephants about 40 meters long… I composited a bunch of photos into a flat view, detail below is that first skull on the far right (Deinotherium giganteum). Download the big original by clicking the first