Tag: "volcanic" at biology news

New Clues Add 40,000 Years to Age of Human Species

...past. But, precisely dating the outcrops required volcanic minerals with elements that undergo radioactive de...y. Brown and McDougall collected rocks containing volcanic debris, which McDougall dated to approximately 195,000 years old. Forty years ago, radiometric dati...

Introduced foxes transformed vegetation on Aleutian Islands from lush grasslands to tundra

...owing tundra. It turns out that the nutrient-poor volcanic soils of the Aleutian archipelago can only support dense grasslands if they receive regular doses of fertilizer in the form of bird droppings. On islands without foxes, seabirds transfer nutrients from the ocean to the land by feeding on marine fish ...

Researchers discover underwater volcano

... growth rate of at least eight inches per day, the volcanic cone has rapidly emerged since the scientists' las...ea Research Laboratory. The water surrounding the volcanic cone is extremely turbid due to hydrothermal activity and the vigorous vents that produce this volca...

Hydrogen and methane provide raw energy for life at 'Lost City'

...ind of field, first discovered in the early 1970s, volcanic activity or magma drives venting and fluids can reach 700 F. The vents at such sites are often referred to as black smokers because some emit hot, mineral-laden fluid that looks like dark, billowing smoke when it hits the icy cold seawater. Carbonat...

Sensor web simulation investigates technique to improve prediction of pollution across the globe

...to react by making new, targeted measurements as a volcanic ash plume is transported to air traffic routes, or when smoke of a wildfire is carried aloft, then dispersed over large metropolitan areas. The sensor web has the potential to improve the response time of our observing systems by reconfiguring their ...

Acid water in East Java threatens biodiversity and local welfare

...sia. This crater lake is the largest collection of volcanic water in the world and is extremely acidic (pH 0.1). The acidic water slowly seeps away, and despite dilution by two tributaries in the area the pH of the river water remains very low. This water is used for agricultural and household purposes, which...

India's smoking gun: Dino-killing eruptions

... layers to estimate the timing and number of major volcanic pulses. All that information points to the 600 me...e past 300 million years have coincided with large volcanic events, said Chenet. The general rule is that massive volcanism like the Deccan Traps correlates wit...

Poison + water = hydrogen. New microbial genome shows how

...rganism. Isolated from a hot spring on the Russian volcanic island of Kunashir, this microbe lives almost entirely on carbon monoxide. While consuming this normally poisonous gas, the microbe mixes it with water, producing hydrogen gas as waste. As the world increasingly considers hydrogen as a potential bi...

Alleged 40,000-year-old human footprints in Mexico much, much older than thought

Alleged footprints of early Americans found in volcanic rock in Mexico are either extremely old - more tha...z of Liverpool's John Moores University, dated the volcanic rock at 40,000 years old. They hypothesized that early hunters walked across ash freshly deposited n...

Relic of life in that Martian meteorite? A fresh look

... compared the results to analogous globules from a volcanic complex on Svalbard, an island north of Norway. It does not appear that living organisms were at work. The research is presented at NASA's Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) 2006 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. March 26-30....

Ancient DNA provides clues to the evolution of social behavior

... known as a genetic bottleneck. Chan thinks that a volcanic eruption known to have occurred in the Andes roughly 3,000 years ago, combined with environmental change and competition from the larger species of tuco-tuco, likely caused the die-off. Most genetic studies rely entirely on modern DNA to estimate hi...

Exposure to volcanic mineral associated with increased mesothelioma incidence in Turkey

High exposure to a fibrous volcanic mineral called erionite was associated with a high...atolian plateau of Turkey. Blocks of erionite from volcanic tuff have been used in construction, and storage rooms for produce have been cut in the tuff. Past ...

Giant deep-sea tubeworm's meal ticket comes in as a skin infection

...d attaches itself to thebottom of the ocean near a volcanic vent, itsmouth disappears and its stomach shrinksaway, even as it grows a specialized organcalled the trophosome that houses thesymbiotic bacteria it collects. "It is anabsolutely obligate symbiosis for the worm,"Fisher explains. "If the larvae do no...

Arctic coring expedition continues to yield new clues

...mosphere at the beginning of the PETM, either from volcanic eruptions, or the melting of oceanic gas hydrates ?mixtures of methane and ice on the seafloor. ...

Far more than a meteor killed dinos

... the lesser and earlier of a series of meteors and volcanic eruptions that pounded life on Earth for more than 500,000 years, say Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller and her collaborators Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and Zsolt Berner and Doris Stueben from Karlsru...

'Fruit fly dating game' provides clues to our reproductive prowess

... the lesser and earlier of a series of meteors and volcanic eruptions that pounded life on Earth for more than 500,000 years, say Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller and her collaborators Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and Zsolt Berner and Doris Stueben from Karlsru...

'Nymph of the sea' reveals remarkable brood

...the shrimps) - which is preserved exceptionally in volcanic ash rocks in Herefordshire. Their findings are published on line in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Professor David Siveter, of the Department of Geology at the University of Leicester, said : "Ostracods are common, pin-head sized crustacean...

Study: Living coral reefs provide better protection from tsunami waves

...i strike against a reef-bounded shoreline, using a volcanic island as an example. The model demonstrates that healthy reefs offer the coast at least twice as much protection as dead reefs. The finding provides the first quantitative confirmation of a widely held theory regarding the value of living coral reef...

Selecting life: Scientists find new way to search for origin of life

...ing and ultraviolet radiation in the atmosphere or volcanic heat and chemical reactions in the deep oceans. Some of these building blocks of life were attracted to specific mineral surfaces, where they collected, concentrated, and underwent further reactions. "Some 20 different amino acids form life-essen...

Volcanic eruptions, ancient global warming linked

...unced today confirmation of a link between massive volcanic eruptions along the east coast of Greenland and in...nto the atmosphere, and definitively links a major volcanic event with a period of global warming. "There has been evidence in the marine record of this peri...

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