History of Geology

Men Of Rock & The Big Freeze

2012-05-28T14:02:00.002-07:00

March 23, 1769 William Smith - Pioneer of applied Geology

2012-03-23T14:32:00.001-07:00

"It´s all there locked in the stone,

the truth is told in fossilized bone."

Devonian blues by Ray Troll (2005)

"Fossils have been long studied as great curiosities, collected with great pains, treasured with great care and at a great expense, and shown and admired with as much pleasure as a child's hobby-horse is shown and admired by himself and his playfellows, because it is pretty; and this has been done by thousands who have never paid the least regard to that wonderful order and regularity with which nature has disposed of these singular productions, and assigned to each class its peculiar stratum."

William Smith, notes written January 5, 1796

William Smith was born March 23, 1769 in the village of Churchill, in the county of Oxfordshire, into a respectable farming family. His father died when he was seven, so his mother brought him to the farm of his uncle.
And just here the young William makes an encounter that will change his life. In these parts of Oxfordshire, for the “long pound” - a weight standard of ca. 600g - are used not the common iron weights, but strange rounded stones. They are commonly found in the nearby quarries. Smith is fascinated of this stones - why they resemble the sea urchins, that he has seen in the books or on the coast of the sea, distant more then 160 kilometers from the place where they are now found? If these are remnants of animals, why are they petrified. Why some of them resemble animals that no scholar has ever seen? Puzzled by this mystery, he starts to collect minerals and fossils. He is an enthusiastic autodidact; studying the landscape he quickly learns geometry, surveying and mapping, hydraulics and hydrology.

At the age of eighteen he became an assistant surveyor, learning his trade from the master surveyor Edward Webb. Surveying required Smith to travel all over England; in 1794 and following years he toured the entire country. Detailed maps were essential to plan and construct streets and canals for the industrial revolution - good surveyors were requested workers.
Here Smith can apply his knowledge, the job of surveying canal routes requires detailed knowledge of the rocks through which the canal was to be build.
In 1792 he works for the rich coalmine owner Elisabeth Jones in Somerset. He lives in a property of the lady – Rugbourne Farm - that he will later call the birthplace of his geology, because of his habit to sit in a niche of the house and study his rocks.
He notes that the coal-bearing layers are over- and underline by a characteristic succession of sandstones and marls. Always is the coal formation overlain by marine and then non-marine rocks. Always is the coal stratum underline by a grey clay – the ancient soil on which the coal forming giant ferns and horsetails grown, millions of years ago.
Even more important, Smith observed that the fossils found in a section of sedimentary rocks were always in a certain order from the bottom to the top of the section. This order of appearance could also be seen in other rock sections, even those on the other side of the British island - maybe on the entire world there is a certain order of strata and whoever can read it will quickly discover the coal-formation – the black gold of the 18th century.

". . . each stratum contained organized fossils peculiar to itself, and might, in cases otherwise doubtful, be recognised and discriminated from others like it, but in a different part of the series, by examination of them"

This is the statement of the "principle of faunal succession": The layers of sedimentary rocks in any given location contain fossils of a definite age in a definite sequence; the same sequence can be found in rocks elsewhere and hence the strata with the same fossils can be correlated between various locations.
The principle of deposition, a stratum that lays below in a succession is older, and vice versa, was not new. But Smith was the first to proof this hypothesis by using guide fossils. Geological maps before Smith mapped and catalogued rocks by their inorganic characteristics - like sandstones, marls and chalks. Still further differentiation was only possible maybe by colour or other minor properties. This classification was very restricted and it showed no apparent pattern. Smith discovered and applied an ulterior classification scheme, a scheme that can differ rocks with no doubt, even if they look very similar.

Fig.2. Ammonites, characteristic fossils for the Mesozoic and the most appreciated fossils by Smith.

In 1816 he publishes his observations in form of a book and a map, describing for ever strata of the United Kingdom the characteristic fossils:

Strata - Identified by organized Fossils.

Fig.3. A diagram of 1888, showing the sequence of strata and their characteristic fossils. Notice that at this date, the recently proposed Ordovician (1878) System had not yet been accepted, nor the Paleocene (1874) or Oligocene (1854) as epochs of the Cenozoic. Instead of “Precambrian” or “Primary” this scale uses the term “Laurentian”, since the studies of Precambrian rocks had made the most progress in the Laurentian region of the Canadian Shield.

Bibliography:

SMITH, W. (1816-1819). Strata identified by organized fossils, containing prints on coloured paper of the most characteristic specimens in each stratum. London: W. Arding.

WINCHESTER, W. (2001). The Map that Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology. New York: Harper Collins.

The last Ichthyosaurus

2012-03-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

"The last Ichthyosaurus" (1854)

"A hiss between the horsetails
Suspicious shines the sea -
There comes with tears in his eyes
An Ichthyosaurus swimming here.

He laments the corruption of times,
as alarming indications
were spotted already
in the Lias stratifications.

The plesiosaur, the old fellow,
Lives off the fat of the land,
And Pterodactyl itself
Recently flew home after much he drank.

The Iguanodon, such a tyke,
Becomes even more cheeky:
As he kissed Ms. Ichthyosauria
Seen by all the other gentry.

I guess there comes a world disaster,
So it can no longer going on!
What will become of the Lias,
If such things are done?

So sighed poor Ichthyosaurus,
his heart crumbling like a chalky cliff,
And so his last breath
went down the hissing tide.

So in this last hour
The entire dinosauria
Went much to deep into the Cretaceous Period
Went extinct as it's time was over.

And if you ask who told me this,
This petrified song
I found it on a fossil palm leaf
Inside a Coprolite!!"

German poet Joseph Viktor von Scheffel (1826-1886)

A geologist riddle #25

2012-03-12T10:30:00.003-07:00

The drawing from the field by a great geologist (already featured on this blog) from a country not yet discussed...the mysterious geologist travelled far, visited Ceylon, Japan, Taiwan, Celebes, Java, the Philippines, Siam, Burma and explored California. The drawings, published after 1877, shows an outcrop from his last journey, during his search for the black gold of the 19th century.

How the Study of Plants revealed the Variability of Climate

2012-02-21T09:27:00.000-08:00

The news of the resuscitated "Ice Age plant", regenerated from 30.000 year old tissue conserved in permafrost, is an intriguing discovery that will help to better understand the evolution of ecosystems during one of the most dramatic epochs of earth history - the Pleistocene-Holocene transition some 10.000 years ago, characterized by strong climatic oscillations from glacial to interglacial conditions.

Already the study of fossil plants played an important role in the reconstruction of the environment and the climate of this period. The German explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was one of the first naturalists to scientifically discuss the distribution of plants related to environmental factors like temperature, rainfall, latitude, height and soil - one of the most famous results of this work is the depiction of the vegetation belts of the Andes.

Fig.1. Vegetation zonation in the Andes, from the "Berghaus-Atlas", a supplement to Humboldt´s work "Kosmos", published in 1645-1862.

Based on these observations it became clear that the fossil remains of plants can be used to reconstruct the environmental factors during the lifetime of these plants.
In 1876 the Norwegian botanist Axel Gudbrand Blytt (1843-1898) published a book on his observations about the distribution of the Ice Age flora on the Scandinavian Peninsula. He recognized various plant communities - defined as Arctic, Subarctic, Boreal, Atlantic, Subboreal and Subatlantic - and suggested, based also on layers of peat where he observed the same plant communities in a certain order, that these communities were the results of various climate driven migrations waves on the peninsula. For Blytt especially the change of dry and wet periods controlled the distribution and migration of plants. These supposed changes could also explain the discoveries of layers with tree stumps in peats all over Europe, grown there when the climate was more favourable for trees.

Fig.2. Blytt´s map of the distribution of plant communities in Norway, from BLYTT 1876.

The Swedish geologist Lennart von Post (1884-1951) used particular plant remains to infer past climatic oscillations. Flowering plants produce pollen grains covered by a chemically very stable substance named Sporopollenin, therefore pollen grains usually are well preserved in soils and sediments. The structures, like spikes or pores, on the surface of pollen grains are species-specific and can be used to determine from which plant-species the pollen was produced. Von Post counted and identified many hundred of pollen grains found in specific depth-intervals of sediment cores and plotted the relative percentage of every species in a diagram. He found that there was a succession of different plants; cold periods during an Ice Age were dominated by pollen from trees adapted to cold and humid conditions, like birch or pine. During warmer periods the pollen of these species disappeared and new tree species, like oak and fir, appeared in the pollen diagram. When the landscape finally became occupied by humans the amount of tree pollen decreases, as the forest is replaced with fields of grass or crop and the pollen of these plants dominate in the sediment core.

The study of pollen, or palynology, is still today an important tool that helps to reconstruct local environment and climatic changes, the stratigraphy of recent deposits, human impact on the landscape, the rise and fall of civilizations and is even used to solve criminal cases.

Bibliography:

BLYTT, A. (1876): Essay on the Immigration of the Norwegian Flora during Alternating Rainy and Dry Periods. Alb. Cammermeyer, Christiana, Oslo, Norway: 89
HILGEN, F.J. (2010): Astronomical dating in the 19th century. Earth-Science Reviews 98: 65-80
POST, V. L. (1944): The Prospect for Pollen Analysis in the Study of the Earth´s Climate History. New Phytologist Vol. 45: 198-203

In Memoriam

2012-02-05T05:27:00.000-08:00

With great consternation I heard about the sudden and tragic death of Dr. Lorenz Keim. I meet him on various field trips and respected him as enthusiastic geologist and able lecturer, dedicated to the divulgation of the newest research dealing with the geology of the Dolomites. He was involved in the preparation of the most recent geological maps of this region and made important contributions for our modern understanding of the diagenesis and geometry of the fossil reefs in the Dolomites and the surrounding stratigraphic framework.

Groundhogs as geomorphologic factor

2012-02-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

Biogeomorphology, also referred as ecogeomorphology, is the study of the relation of life forms with landforms. These interactions range from simple tracks left by an organism in the landscape to the complex relationships of the biosphere with the other spheres of the earth (lithosphere, atmosphere and hydrosphere).
One of the most interesting processes involves digging animals. The role of animals in the development of a landscape is yet poorly studied, but the shear amount of individuals of some species can have profound impact on the development of the environment and a landscape.
Mammals move earth for two main reasons - to gain food (digging up roots or other animals) or to dig a burrow as shelter. Large rodents, like the genus Marmota, are known for their burrowing habits in agricultural areas or pastures, as the entrance to or the collapse of a burrow can pose a hazard for the machinery or the livestock.
The density of marmot burrows varies with the environment, in the dry steppe of central Asia only few animals can live on a certain area, in more humid mountain areas this number can be much higher. The marmot activity can influence surface runoff and erosion of a slope and redistribute humus, moisture and mineral components in the soil profile. The research by Tadzhiyev & Odinoshoyev (1978) "Influence of marmots on soil cover of the eastern Pamirs" on the digging capacity of red marmots showed that the animals could move up to 28 cubic metre of earth per hectare in a single year. This suggests that on a local scale these animals can play a role as geomorphologic factor, giving the widespread distribution and geographic range of this genus.

Deciphering the Layers of Earth

2012-01-12T09:19:00.000-08:00

“This was the man to whom all things were known;
this was the king who knew the countries of the world.
He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things,
he brought us a tale of the days before the flood.
He went on a long journey,
was weary, worn-out with labor,
returning he rested,he engraved on a stone the whole story.”
“The Epic of Gilgamesh” (ca 2.000 B.C.)

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At the Earth's Core

2012-01-08T08:34:00.000-08:00

"[]...the materials of the geologists are not charts, chalk and chatter, but the earth itself. We should never know the truth, until we are able to make that journey, and see for ourselves."

Jules Gabriel Verne (1828 - 1905) was a French author who pioneered the science-fiction genre with various novels, most remarkable for geologists: "A Journey to the Center of the Earth".
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January 6, 1912: Continental Drift!

2012-01-06T11:27:00.000-08:00

January 6, 1912 the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener presented in a lecture entitled “Die Heraushebung der Großformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane) auf geophysikalischer Grundlage” (The uprising of large features of earth’s curst (Continents and Oceans) on geophysical basis) for the first time his hypothesis of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea, from which all modern continents split apart.

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How to celebrate New Year's Eve in style: Fun in a Fossil

2011-12-31T11:03:00.001-08:00

To promote the international exhibition in the Crystal Palace (Sydenham , London) for New Year's Eve 1853 twenty-one distinguished guests were invited to a banquet inside the unfinished model of an Iguanodon, sculpture made by artist Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under severe examination of leading anatomist Richard Owen to celebrate the new discovered proudly-prehistoric monsters [...]

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The End of the Mayan World

2011-12-21T09:30:00.000-08:00

According to the popcorn-movie "2012" (2009) the end of the world will come due increased solar activity that will overheat earth and cause catastrophic volcanic and tectonic storms on December 21, 2012. This premise is so dumb that even NASA declared "2012" as the most "absurd science-fiction movie" of all times, not only because the science is so bad, but the movie exploits also the fear mongering story of the supposed end of the Mayan calendar, first proposed by artist and author José Argüelles in 1987. Almost all of the supposed end of the world tale is nonsense, the various proposed mechanism to explain the destruction of the planet, like solar eruptions, pole shift or the impact of an invisible planet, are unrealistic, as it is unrealistic to claim that the end of a arbitrary time period has any significance for earth.

Fig.1. The goddess Chakchell, with her terrifying snake headdress, is flooding earth with the waters coming from the jar of the gods. She is helped in this task by the dark god of the underworld, with an owl as symbol of his power, and the divine crocodile - even the holy hieroglyphs are crying and the world will soon drown (after the "Codex Dresdensis", ca. 1200-1250, plate 47 "The flood").

However in the last years the Maya Civilization arouse the interest not only of crackpots, but also serious historians and even climate scientists. This ancient society possessed advanced knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and architecture, but 1.200 years ago (750-950 A.D.) the various city-states on the Yucatan peninsula suffered a sudden collapse. Various hypotheses tried to explain this demise: internal warfare, foreign invasions, diseases, overpopulation in combination with environmental degradation and climate change.
The Yucatan peninsula is characterized by a heterogenic spatial distribution of precipitation and seasonal droughts, especially during the beginning of the year (January- May). The climate is influenced by the position of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), wind systems that shift position due the seasons and bring moisture to the land. The Maya had to deal with these variations and in response build large artificial reservoirs. The limestone of the Yucatan peninsula is highly permeable and the groundwater is almost inaccessible, if not by naturally occurring caves or cenotes, and there are virtually no rivers.
It was in these cenotes that geologists of the University of Florida collected sediment cores and discovered in the isotope variations of shells a pronounced drought period between 800 and 1000 A.D., coincident with the collapse of Classic Maya civilization. A even more detailed reconstruction of the climate of the region was possibly by the research done on sediments from the Cariaco Basin, a basin with limited deep water mixing and anoxic conditions on the ground (and therefore perfect sedimentation conditions) offshore Venezuela. Depending from the position of the ITCZ fossil-rich or clastic-rich layers are deposited, so by studying and counting these layers the former variation of the ITCZ and the amount of precipitation can be estimated.
Also this record shows a climate shift and cyclic multi-year droughts from 910 to 760 A.D.

According to the proposed scenario a population at the margin of environmental sustainability experienced repeated droughts and a demise of agricultural production. The various city-states, chronically involved in wars for power and sacrifice victims, consumed the last reserves in a desperate struggle for survive.

However like in the case of Easter Island considering both evidence from natural sciences and historical and cultural circumstances the scenario could become more complicated. The Mayan Civilization was characterized by religious violence and war was less aimed to destroy the enemy than to catch (and sacrifice) the political elite. This society had also survived previous droughts or phases of increased soil erosion, when in A.D. 550-830 the population reached high densities. The power became concentrated in few city-states, which struggled for power and replaced small military expeditions with great wars. The crumbling central government could no longer guarantee the safety of peasants, when the society was further weakened by climate changes.

In the end the city-states were replaced by a most decentralized kind of society, whit the descendants still living today.

Bibliography:

ANSELMETTI, F.S.; HODELL, D.A.; ARIZTEGUI, D.; BRENNER, M. & ROSENMEIER, M.F. (2007): Quantification of soil erosion rates related to ancient Maya deforestation. Geology Vol. 35(10): 915-918
GILL, R.B. (2000): The Great Maya Droughts - Water, Life, and Death. Univ. New Mexico Press: 464
PETERON, L.C. & HAUG, G.H. (2005): Climate and the Collapse of Maya Civilization. American Scientist, Vol. 93: 322-329

Dear Leaders and a Volcano

2011-12-19T05:43:00.000-08:00

Eternal President Kim Il-sung (1912-∞) and Dear Leader Kim Jong Il (1941-2011). In the background Tianchi or "Lake of Heavenly Peace", a crater lake inside the volcano Baitoushan or Paektusan ("white headed mountain"). Tianchi Lake has a diameter of more than three kilometres and is 373 meter deep. The volcanic complex is more than 2 million years old, however the caldera formed only during a large eruption about 965 A.D. Since then at least 3 to 5 eruptions of small to moderate size occurred, the last in 1703.

Curiously the lake is not only the mythical birthplace of Dear Leader but hosts also a Lake Monster.

Bibliography:

SCHMINCKE, H.-U. (2004): Volcanism. Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg: 324

At the Mountains of Madness

2011-12-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

December 14, was the 100 years anniversary of the first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole in the middle of the continent of Antarctica. Until then only segments of the coasts were known and partially mapped.

Fig.1. The dog Chris inspecting a grammophone during the Scott Expedition in Antarctica (photo by Herbert George Ponting, 1911).

It is no wonder that such an unknown land influenced the imagination of many writers and later film directors.

"At the Mountains of Madness" is a science-fiction/horror story by the American writer H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), written in February/March 1931 and originally published in three parts in the February, March and April 1936 issues of the pulp-magazine "Astounding Stories" (also one of the first pulp- and horror fiction magazines ever to be published).
The story is written in a first-person perspective by geologist William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University, which led a geological expedition to Antarctica in "1930".
The expedition discovers first strange fossils, eons of years older then all other signs of life on our planet, and finally a mountain range, much higher and darker then ever imagined. But after a carefully investigation along the borders of the mountains and the discovery of even more strange fossils, contact get lost with a part of the team and the narrator makes his way to discover what happened at the Mountains of Madness.
Lovecraft incorporates in his story many scientific observations made at the time, especially the discovery of fossils. Little was known about the geology of Antarctica; rock exposures comprise only 1-3% of the land area and are limited to isolated coastal regions and to the peaks of the Transantarctic Mountains, crossed for the first time by the Ernest Shackleton-expedition in 1908. Only in 1928-1930 the Richard Evelyn Byrd-expedition collected the first fossils.
Still today sites with fossils are rare spots; from Antarctica we know some dinosaur species, synapsid species, a plesiosaur, Eocene mammals and a terror bird - however plant remains are by far the most common fossils and especially these plants proofed that Antarctica was once a tropical paradise.
Lovecraft describes the fictional discovery of a cave that acted as sediment trap for millions of years:

"Washed down from unknown jungles of Mesozoic tree ferns and fungi, and forests of Tertiary cycads, fan palms, and primitive angiosperms, this osseous medley contained representatives of more Cretaceous, Eocene, and other animal species than the greatest paleontologist could have counted or classified in a year."

Also other authors located a tropical Lost World near the Antarctic continent. Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) published in 1918 the first part of a science-fiction book in the "Blue Book Magazine": "The Land That Time Forgot". Here a primordial world populated by tropical forests and of course dinosaurs is located on the island of Caprona, a land mass near Antarctica, first reported by the (fictitious) Italian explorer Caproni in 1721. The tale inspired two movies: "The Land That Time Forgot"(1975) and "The People That Time Forgot"(1977).

Fig.3. Cover art for first combined edition (1924) of The Land That Time Forgot.

Si-C

2011-12-04T13:08:00.001-08:00

In the science-fiction/monster movie "Monolith-Monster" (1957) fragments of a meteorite are discovered in the desert of California. The strange mineral from outer space starts to grow to gigantic crystals when it comes into contact to water and a heavy rainfall is occurring in the mountains where the fragments are scattered around (the movie is also worth to watch for the geo-babble as noted by Jessica Ball in her Geological Frigthfest review on Magma cum Laude; and you can see here for yourself). The idea of growing minerals was later adapted in the computer game "Command & Conquer: Tiberium", where an extraterrestrial meteorite brings the unknown mineral Tiberium to earth, that grows by extracting nutrients from all other life-forms.
Every single fragment of these crystals can grow, similar to real crystals; however they are not considered life-forms as they lack the ability to actively self-replicate or even evolve.

On earth the dominant life-forms are based on the element carbon (C) - excluding the case of the presumed arsenic-bacteria - but already early science-fiction writers speculated on alternative forms of life, based on other elements like silicon, nitrogen, phosphorus, boron and even metals like titanium, aluminium, magnesium and iron.

In 1891 the German astrophysicist Julius Schreiner was one of the first to propose silicon (Si) life-forms, the idea was taken seriously by British chemist Emerson Reynolds who speculated about the habitats that such a creature could be inhabit.
Later H.G. Wells wrote

"One is startled towards fantastic imaginings by such a suggestion: visions of silicon-aluminium organisms - why not silicon-aluminium men at once? - wandering through an atmosphere of gaseous sulphur, let us say, by the shores of a sea of liquid iron some thousand degrees or so above the temperature of a blast furnace."

Silicon was chosen because its similarities to carbon - it is common in the universe and it can form log and stable polymers, it also reacts with hydrogen (forming the instable gas silane) and oxygen (forming stable silicones) to form stable molecules. Oxidation is used by terrestrial life forms to gain energy and the waste product is the gas carbon dioxide. A silicon creature would however produce a solid mineral composed of silicon dioxide. According to some authors the respiratory system of a silicon life-form therefore must produces sand or even bricks.
The idea became popular in the short story "A Martian Odyssey", published in 1934 by Stanley Weisbaum (1902-1935):

"Those bricks were its waste matter... We're carbon, and our waste is carbon dioxide, and this thing is silicon, and its waste is silicon dioxide-silica. But silica is a solid, hence the bricks. And it builds itself in, and when it is covered, it moves over to a fresh place to start over."

Aliens as silicon life-forms became very popular in TV-productions and movies also after the Monolith-Monster. The "Island of Terror" (1966) is inhabited by artificial "silicates" life-form that feed on calcium of human bones.

As a matter of fact the very incarnation of the extraterrestrial xenomorph -H.R. Giger´s "Alien" - possesses a shell of Si-compounds to protect it from environmental factors. This resistant shell is also very useful to contain the acid blood of the creature.

In the TV series "Star Trek" the crew discovers a silicon-based life-form during mining activities on the planet Janus VI (episode "Devil in the Dark"), however this creature is less hostile than other xenomorphs:

Spock: "Life as we know it, is universally based on some combination of carbon compounds. But what if life exists based on other element. For instance silicon."

In "Star Trek: The Next Generation" some episodes feature living crystals or the dangerous "Crystalline Entity".
In the X-file episode "Firewalker" a mushroom like parasitic life-form (however terrestrial in origin and the result of a parallel evolution process) produces as waste simple sand (that fills the lungs of its host). The parasite is discovered as spores coming from inside an active volcano start spreading. It is interesting to note that geneticist Haldane, J. B. S. proposed that silicon life-forms could survive inside a planet feeding on partially molten rocks.

Despite these promising visions, the structure of silicates is limited mostly on long chains or sheets (minerals). Silicon doesn't form complex molecules, like enzymes in carbon based life forms, and it would be difficult to achieve a metabolism with such a simple chemistry.

Bibliography:

REYNOLDS, J.E. (1893): Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Nature 48(477)
WELLS, H.G. (1894): Another Basis for Life. Saturday Review: 676

Gaia

2011-11-24T06:48:00.001-08:00

"Surface conditions on Earth, have been for most of geological time regulated by life…[]…This new link between Geology and Biology originated in the Gaia hypothesis''
NASA geologist Paul Lowman (2002)

The concept of a living planet is a rare but intriguing vision of pop-art and science-fiction. In the Italian movie "Planet on the Prowl" (1966) the gravitational pull of a planet is causing havoc on earth. A team is send into space to destroy the planet, but here they discover that the celestial body is a living (!) cybernetic organism (however artificial in origin) that will not simply surrender without fight. A very similar plot was already used by director Antonio Margheriti in "Battle of the Worlds" (1961), where the mainframe of an alien spaceship is mimicking a planet.
A classic approach to a planet as life form is found in comics in the shape of the evil characters of Ego the living planet ("Thor" Sept. 1966) and Mogo the living planet ("Green Lantern" May 1985). Both planets are self-concious and selfish entities that feed on other worlds.

In 1965 the independent scientist James Lovelock, inspired by research on the possible habitability of planet Mars, proposed in a Nature-article to see the various spheres of earth (lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and atmosphere) as an interconnected and self-regulating system. He followed the suggestions by novelist William Golding and called this idea the Gaia-hypothesis, after the ancient mythological titan Gaia - personification of earth (this unintentionally, but supposed religious connection caused most concern in the scientific community). However the general notion that the Gaia-hypothesis states that "earth as a living planet" or a "life form" in the sense of entity or even individual is incorrect.

Fig.1. "SimEarth" is a simulator for life-supporting planets, 1990-1992 by Maxis.

Lovelock argued that both biotic and abiotic processes limit the possible amplitude of changes in the salinity of the oceans, the surface temperature of earth and the atmospheric chemistry - therefore forcing earth into a life-supporting disequilibrium between two stable extremes like the frozen wasteland of Mars or a hellish world as Venus.

In 1971 microbiologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) joined Lovelock (here an interview with both scientists in 2011), emphasizing the significance of microbial life and activity for the Gaia-theory and arguing how natural selection, acting on single individuals, could account for the development of (apparently) stable systems. Egoistic organism do not manipulate deliberately the system so it can support them; however if an organisms harms his environment (and the life-supporting properties) it will be naturally selected and be removed from the system. Environments are also not static systems that will not react to biotic changes, but can oscillate around "set points" without loosing their life-supporting properties.

"Some 30 million types of extant organisms have descended with modification from common ancestors; that is, all have evolved. All of them-ultimately bacteria or products of symbioses of bacteria - produce reactive gases to and remove them from the atmosphere, the soil, and the fresh and saline waters. All directly or indirectly interact with each other and with the chemical constituents of their environment, including organic compounds, metal ions, salts, gases, and water. Taken together, the flora, fauna, and the microbiota (microbial biomass), confined to the lower troposphere and the upper lithosphere, is called the biota. The metabolism, growth, and multiple interactions of the biota modulate the temperature, acidity-alkalinity, and, with respect to chemically reactive gases, atmospheric composition at the Earth's surface."

Margulis also emphasized the link between geology and biology - for example:
Plate tectonics is like life (as we at the moment know) a unique feature of the planet Earth. Apart of the size, density and petrological composition, plate tectonics seems to depend from the existence of liquid water on a planet. Without an atmosphere, earth would be to cold to maintain water in liquid form; however the chemistry of the atmosphere is influenced both by the lithosphere (by volcanic eruptions) and controlled by the carbon-circle of the biosphere. Finally plate tectonics modified (and modifies) the surface of earth and the environments, forcing life forms to adapt and evolve - probably even with no plate tectonics life would be still possible on earth, but it surely would be much more monotonous.
So every subsystem is connected to the others and influence them, being at the same moment influenced by all other subsystems.

Today´s legacy of Lovelock and Margulis is the consideration to see geology as part of the Earth System Sciences and appropriately to understand the Earth as a system.

Bibliography:

MARGULIS, L. (2004): Gaia by Any Other Name. In (ed.) Schneider S.H. "Scientists Debate Gaia - The Next Century": 7 - 12

It Came From the Ice!

2011-11-18T08:20:00.001-08:00

“I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why. It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic - with its vast fossil hunt and its wholesale boring and melting of the ancient ice caps. And I am the more reluctant because my warning may be in vain.”
"At the Mountains of Madness" (1931/1936) by H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937)

One of the most classic monster of movies is without doubt the "mummy", mostly of Egyptian origin and with human shape (despite the fact that thousands of Egyptian mummies of various animals are known). Still today we are fascinated by the effort put into the preservation of a body, the ultimate victory above decay, corruption and finally death himself.
But there are not only artificial mummies, nature offers various methods to create "natural mummies". Corpses can be preserved in bog deposits - to acid for decomposing organism - or tar pits - to poorly oxygenated - or permafrost - to cold for an effective decomposition of organic matter.

Natural mummies discovered in permafrost of ice age mammals offers a broad spectrum for research: taxonomic relations and dispersal history can be studied trough the ancient DNA, the structure of soft tissue can be observed in detail, paleo diet can be inferred by the gut contents and faeces, on some carcasses the circumstances of death can be observed - some animals show injuries, pathological deformations or tissue changes and parasites.
In the Siberian permafrost the best preserved specimens are those of mammoths, especially young and small individuals like the 40.000 years old mammoth calfs "Dima" (discovered in 1977) and "Lyuba" (2007); one of the oldest specimens is the 50.000 years old male "Khroma" (2009).

The carcass of Khroma, partially eaten by modern scavengers, was discovered in July 2009 by a local hunter on the banks of the river Khroma. A preliminary study showed that in the carcass fossil germs were preserved, most probably anthracis, which can cause anthrax and black lung disease. To prevent any possible contamination of involved researchers it was decided to sterilize the specimen. The still frozen carcass was therefore bombarded with a massive dose of Gamma-rays in a laboratory in Grenoble.
Bacteria can theoretically survive long periods when frozen. In 2007 an international research team announced the discovery of 500.000 years old bacteria with intact and active DNA-sequence in samples of permafrost.

The scenario of a still living pathogen or parasite inside a frozen and preserved body of an ice age mammal is also the main storyline of a TV-horror-production of 2009, named appropriately "The Thaw" (strangely the title for the German release is the exact opposite - "Frozen"). In a remote region of the Canadian tundra a carcass of mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius?) is discovered in a melting glacier.
(P.S. prehistoric monsters entrapped in ice have a long tradition - see for example "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" in 1953, "Godzilla" in 1954 and "Dinosaurus!" in 1960)

This is a common misconception, the natural mummies discovered until now were preserved all in permafrost soil, which contains local ice lenses of secondary genesis. This ice maybe plays an important role in the desiccation and preservation of the carcass, as moisture migrates from the body to the ice.
Anyway - the warming of the Canadian Arctic due anthropogenic climate change not only releases dead mammoths from the melting underground, but also a deadly and living pathogen - a parasite in from of an arthropod (a - bug - as noobs call it) that needs body heat. To survive inside its host the parasite weakens the immune system (as some real parasites do) - this behaviour would finally cause the death of the host, if the flesh-eating bugs (arthropods) didn't also multiply so fast that they eat their victim from inside.

The movie uses a environmental cause (the disease is released due the warming of the planet caused by our actions) as premise, most of it is however clearly inspired (or copied) from the movie "The Thing" (1982), even if there the parasite - first hiding and then exactly copying its host- is an alien lifeform.

The Thaw doesn't really explain the origin of the parasite, but it seems almost certain that it is of terrestrial origin and also so deadly that it caused the extinction of the entire Pleistocene megafauna. The idea of an unidentified hyperdisease killing animals was proposed in 1997 after the first epidemics of Ebola in 1976-1979 and 1994-1996. Main vector of the presumed pathogen was Homo sapiens, infecting mammoths and other large mammals during his travels around Siberia and North America. In 2006 a research on the pathological malformations of bones from American Mastodon (Mammut americanum) and bison bones suggested that the animals suffered from an infection of tuberculosis. A relatively large number of geographically and temporal separated individuals showed those malformations.
A recent example how dangerous pathogens can be for an isolated population was observed on the Christmas Islands in the Indian Ocean. In 1899 human colonization and introduced black rats (Rattus rattus) brought a unicellular parasitic protist (Trypanosoma) onto the islands. The endemic rat species (Rattus macleari) was not immune against the introduced parasite and the population suffered a rapid decline - in 1904 the species was considered extinct. However this is an example on a very confined space, involving a single species - it remains unclear how a single pathogen could wipe out so many species in such a short time on almost the entire planet.

Last but not least: a strange movie combines somehow The Thing with mammoths. In the TV-horror "Mammoth" (2006) an alien lifeform assimilates a partially frozen woolly mammoth exposed in a museum. The mammoth-alien-zombie goes on a rampage - killing people by adsorbing their life energy... until stopped by the Men in Black...

Bibliography:

JOHNSON, S.S. et al. (2007): Ancient bacteria show evidence of DNA repair. PNAS Vol. 104 (36): 14401-14405
ROTHSCHILD, B.M. & LAUB, R. (2006): Hyperdisease in the late Pleistocene: validation of an early 20th century hypothesis. Naturwissenschaften 93:557-564
WYATT, K.B.; CAMPOS, P.F.; GILBERT, M.T.P.; KOLOKOTRONIS, S.-O.; HYNES, W.H., et al. (2008): Historical Mammal Extinction on Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) Correlates with Introduced Infectious Disease. PLoS ONE 3(11): 1-9

November 17, 1918: The Ghost of Slumber Mountain

2011-11-17T10:56:00.001-08:00

"The Ghost of Slumber Mountain" is an 11 minutes long movie written and directed by special effects pioneer Willis O´Brien and released November 17, 1918. It features the - at the time - pioneering technology of "stop motion animation" with five models of dinosaurs and prehistoric beasts. The main scene of this movie is also one of the most classic images of monster movies - a fierce battle between Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus. Unfortunately the producer Herbert M. Dawley, decided to re-cut the original movie from 30 minutes to less than 11 minutes, most of this material is today lost (however there exists a restored version with 19 minutes). Parts of the footage were reused in the movies "Along the Moonbeam Trail" (1920, a movie were dinosaurs live on the moon) and the documentary "Mystery of Life" (1931).

Invasion of the European Dinosaurs!! Part I: ca. 1800-1900

2011-11-15T08:02:00.001-08:00


Fig.1. Archaeopteryx

The fossil gallery at the recent Munich Show 2011 was dedicated to the "European Dinosaurs" - a good overview of some of the historic fossils (with the classics from Victorian Britain and Germany), but also special apparitions of the newest discoveries from the Mesozoic of the European continent.

Dinosaurs have a long tradition in Europe - the first (as such) recognized "terrible lizards" came from England: it was in 1824 that there Reverend William Buckland described the lower jaw of Megalosaurus.

Fig.2. The jaw of Megalosaurus as published in Buckland´s "Notice on the Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield" (1824).

Fig.3. Isolated tooth, Megalosaurus bucklandi, from the Jurassic Stonesfield-Formation (Oxfordshire), found previously of 1882.

But already in 1677 the English historian Robert Plot (1640-1696) describes in his "The natural history of Oxfordshire" a gigantic bone (today lost), found presumably in a quarry at Chipping Norton (also Oxfordshire), as the bone of an elephant of Roman age.
It seems plausible that in the next centuries ulterior bones were discovered, however only with the advent of comparative anatomy (promoted by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier) it became clear what these bones could be - the remains of large reptiles, however quite different to all living animals. After the description of Megalosaurus soon followed Iguanodon (1825), Hyaeosaurus (1833), Thecodontosaurus (1836) and Cetiosaurus (1836).

The first non-british dinosaur came from the Triassic sediments of Southern Germany, described by the German palaeontologist Hermann von Meyer as Plateosaurus in 1837.

Fig.5. Plateosaurus.

Streptospondylus and Poekilopleuron were described in 1832 and respectively in 1838 from Jurassic sediments in France. Archaeopteryx was first described (again by von Meyer) in 1861 based on a single feather, only later an almost complete specimen started an intense debate about the evolutionary connection between dinosaurs and birds. In the same year a distant cousin of Archaeopteryx was described by Andreas Wagner as a sort of very strange lizard: Compsognathus longipes.

Fig.6. The first fossil of Compsognathus, discovered in 1858 by physicist and fossil collector Joseph Oberndorfer.

The British anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley recognized it as example of one of the first complete dinosaurs and based his very cautionary and speculative hypothesis of a possible "relationship" between reptiles and birds on this species. Huxley described in 1868 another small dinosaur species, but this time a herbivore: Hypsilophodon.
In February 1878 miners discovered a bone bed of Iguanodon, the almost complete skeletons enabled palaeontologist Louis Dollo (1857-1931) to reconstruct a large, biped and herbivorous animal.

Fig.7. Hypsilophodon foxii, Wealden (Lower Cretaceous), collected previously 1882.

Bibliography:

RAUHUT, O.W.M. (2011): Kontinent der Dinosaurier - Europa. Mineralientage München - Messekatalog: 132-146

Impact!

2011-11-10T12:10:00.001-08:00

Movies that deal with the impact of a meteorite on earth have the great advantage that they can almost completely define the scenario - until now almost no reference exists how an impact would destroy a city or earth itself. Large impacts are relatively rare in historic times, the most famous (and still controversial) is the Tunguska event in 1908, however because of the remoteness of the Siberian taiga the damage and the fatalities were limited. Interests on this kind of catastrophe aroused late, only in the mid 20th century the possibility that earth can be hit by large chunks of extraterrestrial material became largely publicized.

Collapse !

2011-11-05T12:05:00.000-07:00

"Anyone who thinks that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."
Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1993), American economist

The plot of the movie "Rapa Nui" (1994) is based loosely on native legends and the hypothetical collapse of environment and society on the remote island of Easter Island. This scenario is based primarily on the discovery during an archaeology expedition prior to 1961 of unknown palm-like pollen in sediments of swamps and lakes of the island - which today lacks completely native shrubs and trees.

The movie does compress more than 1.000 years of history in just one and a half hour, presenting a fast and sudden collapse of a highly developed society.

The Toadstone

2011-10-31T11:52:00.000-07:00

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."
"As You Like It" Act 2, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1623)

Fig.1. Bufonite as depicted in Ulisse Aldrovandi's "Musaeum Metallicum" (1648). This Bufonite seems to be some sort of concretion or possibly a Bezoar-stone.

The Bufonite / Botrax / Borax / Batrachite / Chelonite / Brontias / dragonstone or Lapis Bufonis / toadstone is a particular form of gemstone that grows in the brains of toads, most often after various toads jumped on the head of the king of the toads. Two kinds of stones exist, one is white, the other black - they differ significantly in their magic properties.
The stone must be recovered by putting the toad on a red blanket or by exposing the animal to heat - it will then regurgitate the stone, now you must quickly take it or otherwise the animal will swallow it again. Ants can also skeletonise a dead toad and expose the stone.

Fig.2. A 1497 illustration by the German botanist and physician Johannes de Cuba, depicting the extraction and use of a toadstone.

The stone protects from magic and misfortune, has healing powers for all sorts of wounds and interior pains. In the vicinity of poison its change its colour and starts to transpire a liquid.

Despite the vague descriptions that exist for this magic gemstone, "toadstones" were identified with the fossilized teeth of Lepidotus - an extinct genus of ray-finned fish from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods - probably due the supposed similarities of the fossil teeth to the eyes of the toad.

Fig.3. Another kind of Bufonite as depicted in Ulisse Aldrovandi's "Musaeum Metallicum" (1648), these are clearly the fossil teeth of the fish Lepidotus.

Fig.4. Lepidotus teeth after Charles Lyell´s "Elements of Geology" (1871).

Beware of the Schlock!

2011-10-26T11:49:00.000-07:00

In the past I already rambled on movies and (some sort of) science, but considering the sheer amount of bad movies out there it is worth to collect the material on an own blog - dedicated to the science of bad movie-science, or: Schlockology.

Paleoseismology of the Anatolian and Caucasus Region

2011-10-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

"The people of Behura fled from my weapons into the mountains of Uschkiani and Banni. I surrounded part of them and killed all. The others that could flee were burned by the earth god Teischeba."
Description of the military campaign of king Argischti I in 780-756 B.C.

Turkey is characterized by two main strike-slip fault systems - the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) and the East Anatolian Fault - that in the Caucasus region merge together in a complex tectonic system dominated by compressional thrust faulting.

Devastating earthquakes of the last decades occurred mainly along the dextral North Anatolian Fault that forms the plate boundary between the Anatolian and Eurasian plates. This is also a densely populated region with the city of Istanbul as one of the most important harbours of the Mediterranean Sea.

May 10, 1566 the cities of Rossana and Constantinople (modern Istanbul) were hit by an earthquake that caused the collapse of buildings. Some 50 years earlier (October 10, 1509) Constantinople had been affected by an even worse disaster, killing 13.000 people.

During the 20th century seismic activity apparently moved along the NAF from the east to the west, in 1999 two strong earthquakes hit the city of Izmit, killing 17.000 people.

In Armenia the strongest earthquake since centuries occurred December 7, 1988, it destroyed the city of Spitak and killed 25.000 people.

Fig.1. Simplified tectonic map of the Caucasus region with the locations of important earthquakes - the recent earthquake at Van, the earthquake of Spitak and the historic earthquake of Behura. Various sections of the North Anatolian Fault show a progressive younger activity from the east to the west (colour coded). According to some models this could suggest that stress is released following the fault system and that Istanbul could be hit again by a stronger earthquake in the future.

The region around Lake Van was repeatedly hit in the present and the past by strong earthquakes. Cronicles report of havoc and destruction in the 4th century and again in the 10th century, in 1976 an earthquake in the Van Province caused 4.000 victims.
One of the oldest earthquakes in the Caucasus region was inferred from historic descriptions and confirmed by geologic evidence -it dates back to more than 2.700 years.

A French-Armenian team of paleoseismologists searching for suitable sites for their research discovered on aerial photographies the ruins of the ancient city of Behura.
Paleoseismology tries to collect evidence for earthquakes based on both archaeological as geologic proxies to improve the knowledge of the seismic history of a region. Knowing this history of a region can help to estimate the time-intervals occurring between earthquakes of a certain magnitude.
Ancient documents refer to a city located in the area around the Lake Sevan that was conquered in 780 to 756 B.C. by the great king Argischti I, the description of the siege is curious, mentioning fire, ash and clouds (send supposedly by the earth god Teischeba) helping destroying the city. Maybe this is the description of a volcanic eruption accompanied by earthquakes. Nearby the site relatively unweathered and therefore probably young lava flows coming from the volcano Porak were discovered,
In Behura the excavation of a trench revealed a complex stratigraphy of soils, a displaced wall, scree deposits and younger soils, suggesting that the city was in fact destroyed by an earthquake.

Bibliography:

HERVÈ, P. & KARAKHANIAN, A. (2001): Der Untergand von Behura. Spektrum der Wissenschaft -Dossier 2 "Die Unruhige Erde": 31-35
JACOB, K. (2006): Istanbul - Warten auf den großen Schlag. Bild der Wissenschaft 2: 48-53

October 23, 4004: The Creation of the World

2011-10-23T09:27:00.000-07:00

October 23, has become famous by (non)geologists as earth's birthday - largely due the brief mention in textbooks of the Irish Archbishop James Ussher's (1581-1656) work published in 1650 as the "Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti" (Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the earliest beginning of the world). Ussher presents a possible chronology of the 6.000 years old history of earth and humankind based on references in the bible and research of others scholars of the time (most influential was John Lightfoot - 1602-1675 - who published his calculations in 1644).
For Ussher and other scholars it was important to know the age of the earth to possibly infer the time of the rapture. As for god a day is like thousand days and he needed 6 days to create the universe, the world would was created 4.000 years before Christ and last for 2.000 years after.
The exact date given by the Ussher-Lightfoot-Chronology - October 23*, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning - has become ridiculed by scientists as the futile attempt to determinate natural facts only based on the interpretation of Bronze Age myths [* or 6 p.m. October 22, 4004 B.C. according to the Jewish calendar].

However considering the time and the purpose of the work, Ussher's attempts were not too farfetched - his conclusions were based on the information that was available at the time and served well the theological questions that they should help clarify.

Also this age was not universally and uncritically accepted- there were many earlier attempts to determinate the age of the earth and many concluded that earth was significantly older than known human history. Also during and shortly after Ussher there were serious doubts on the veracity of the 6.000 years time interval, manly due the observation in nature and outcrops.
For example in the book "A Tour through Sicily and Malta" the stratigraphic research by the Sicilian Canon Giuseppe Recupero (1720-1778) on the slopes of Mount Etna is mentioned. Recupero discovered a succession of seven lava flows, he dated the youngest to the second Punic War (218 to 201 B.C.) and therefore the oldest could be 7x2.000 years =14.000 years old.

Finally on March 17, 1785 a man will propose a new modern approach - "we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."

Fig.1. llustration from Thomas Burnet´s book "The Sacred Theory of the Earth", published in 1684.