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Abundant dinosaur footprints in Alaska reveal that high-latitude hadrosaurs preferred tidally influenced habitats... Dinosaur fossils are well-known from Alaska, most famously from areas like Denali National Park and the North Slope, but there are very few records of dinosaurs from the Alaskan Peninsula in the southwest part of the state. In this study, Fiorillo and colleagues document abundant dinosaur trackways from Aniakchak National Monument, around 670km southwest of Anchorage. The trackways were preserved in the Chignik Formation, a series of coastal sediment deposits dating back to the Late Cretaceous Period around 66 million years ago. Survey work from 2001-2002 and...

(Video at source)A group of international researchers say they have uncovered possible evidence of a warmer climate in Alaska — dating back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Dr. Tony Fiorillo of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, Texas, and his team are fresh back from a three-week, remote expedition to Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve. During that time, Fiorillo says the researchers discovered what appeared to be a crayfish burrow. How do crayfish fit in with dinosaurs? We wondered that too. "They lived with the dinosaurs," Fiorillo explained. "As you can imagine, in Anchorage, there aren't...

Debate erupts anew: Did Thera's explosion doom Minoan Crete? William J. Broad Thursday, October 23, 2003 For decades, scholars have debated whether the eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean more than 3,000 years ago brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the peak of its glory. The volcanic isle (whose remnants are known as Santorini) lay just 110 kilometers from Minoan Crete, so it seemed quite reasonable that its fury could have accounted for the fall of that celebrated people. . This idea suffered a blow in 1987 when Danish scientists studying cores from the Greenland...

The nineteenth day of May, 1780, began in New England like any other pretty, late-spring morning. Fruit blossoms dangled heavy in the warm, newly risen sun. The scent of nectar brought drowsy honeybees from their straw hives. The dawn chorus of songbirds chirped and echoed across the sleepy countryside as farm laborers yoked their horses to heavy wooden ploughs and carts ready for the day ahead. But by mid-morning the pastoral calm would be turned on its head. Laborers and schoolchildren would be scurrying home for shelter. By noon, birds would be roosting in the trees and bats would be...

Break out the flashlights. When a full lunar eclipse takes place on the shortest day of the year, the planet may just get awfully dark. The upcoming Dec. 21 full moon -- besides distinguishing itself from the others in 2010 by undergoing a total eclipse -- will also take place on the same date as the solstice (the winter solstice if you live north of the equator, and the summer solstice if you live to the south). Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and marks the official beginning of winter. The sun is...

Had it appeared on the SciFi Channel, “Supervolcano” would have received little attention other than a few random reviews. Instead, it was broadcast on Discovery and was hyped even to the point of having trailers appear in movie theaters. According to the advertising, “This is a true story. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

A restless volcano near Alaska's most populated region is being watched by scientist and officials, who warned on Thursday of the risk of clouds of ash and a tsunami from a possible eruption. The intensifying rumblings in the past few weeks at Augustine Volcano, an island peak 175 miles southwest of Anchorage in Cook Inlet, have produced a series of steam explosions, releases of sulfur gas and signs that there may be an eruption similar to events in 1986 and 1976 which sent ash clouds as high as 40,000 feet, scientists said. There has even been an increase of 1...

The ancient Minoan city of Akrotiri was destroyed by a massive eruption over 3,000 years ago. Will it happen again soon to the excavated remains and the modern town? Scientists uncover some possible signs..... Now, a new survey suggests that a chamber of molten rock beneath Santorini's volcano has expanded 10-20 million cubic metres – up to 15 times the size of London's Olympic Stadium – between January 2011 and April 2012. The growth of this 'balloon' of magma has seen the surface of the island rise 8-14 centimetres during this period, a team led by Oxford University scientists has...

MAGNITUDE AND RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGESGuest post by Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington UniversityThe GISP2 Greenland ice core has proven to be a great source of climatic data from the geologic past. Ancient temperatures can be measured using oxygen isotopes in the ice and ages can be determined from annual dust accumulation layers in the ice. The oxygen isotope ratios of thousands of ice core samples were measured by Minze Stuiver and Peter Grootes at the University of Washington (1993, 1999) and these data have become a world standard.The ratio of 18O to 16O depends on...

Article by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor published in Science magazineBEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL June 17, 2010 -- In a just published article in Science magazine (June 18, 2010), Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev presents novel implications related to new developments in the radiocarbon dating of Pharaonic Egypt. The article reports that, for the first time, it is possible to relate the Minoan Santorini eruption with Egyptian Historical Chronology solely on the basis of radiocarbon dates. Thus, it appears that the eruption preceded the 18th Dynasty and occurred during the Hyksos Period. Moreover, conventional association of...

Two olive branches buried by a Minoan-era eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years, according to two researchers who presented conclusions of their previously published research during an event on Tuesday at the Danish Archaeological Institute of Athens. Speaking at an event entitled "The Enigma of Dating the Minoan Eruption - Data from Santorini and Egypt", the study's authors, Dr. Walter Friedrich of the Danish University of Aarhus and Dr. Walter Kutschera of the Austrian...

A thought about ice cores just occurred to me, and I need someone in the know to verify or refute this argument. Scientists claim to know what the temperature was in past years primarily by drilling ice core samples. They measure levels of specific gasses, like carbon dioxide, that are trapped within the layers of the ice, and somehow they calculate the temperature for that time based off of "certain assumptions" (none of which are mentioned in the wikipedia article). That is rather dubious inandof itself, but I want to take that thought in a different direction. We all know...

Last Updated: Friday, 20 April 2007, 08:05 GMT 09:05 UK The wave that destroyed Atlantis By Harvey Lilley BBC Timewatch The legend of Atlantis, the country that disappeared under the sea, may be more than just a myth. Research on the Greek island of Crete suggests Europe's earliest civilisation was destroyed by a giant tsunami. Video reconstruction of the tsunami Until about 3,500 years ago, a spectacular ancient civilisation was flourishing in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ancient Minoans were building palaces, paved streets and sewers, while most Europeans were still living in primitive huts. But around 1500BC the people who...

April 28, 2006Cornell study of ancient volcano, seeds and tree rings, suggests rewriting Late Bronze Age Mediterranean history By Alex Kwan Separated in history by 100 years, the seafaring Minoans of Crete and the mercantile Canaanites of northern Egypt and the Levant (a large area of the Middle East) at the eastern end of the Mediterranean were never considered trading partners at the start of the Late Bronze Age. Until now. Trenchmaster Vronwy Hankey and foreman Antonis Zidianakis excavate storage jars from the Minoan settlement Myrtos-Pyrgos. The jars were analyzed in the Cornell study using radiocarbon analyses. Cultural links between...

WASHINGTON - Compared to the well-studied world of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the civilizations that flourished in the eastern Mediterranean just before Homer’s time are still cloaked in mystery. Even the basic chronology of the region during this time has been heatedly debated. Now, a resolution has finally emerged -- initiated, quite literally, by an olive branch.Scientists have discovered the remains of a single olive tree, buried alive during a massive volcanic eruption during the Late Bronze Age. A study that dates this tree, plus another study that dates a series of objects from before, during and after the eruption,...

During the Late Bronze Age, the Aegean volcanic island of Thera erupted violently, spreading pumice and ash across the eastern Mediterranean and triggering frosts as far away as what is now California. The Theran town of Akrotiri was completely buried. Tsunamis up to 12 meters high crashed onto the shores of Crete, 110 kilometers to the south, and the cataclysm may ultimately have sped the demise of Crete's famed Minoan civilization. For nearly 30 years, archaeologists have fought over when the eruption took place. Those who rely on dates from pottery styles and Egyptian inscriptions put the event at roughly...

Determining a reliable calendrical age of the Santorini (Minoan) eruption is necessary to place the impact of the eruption into its proper context within Bronze Age society in the Aegean region. The high-resolution record of the deposition of volcanically produced acids on polar ice sheets, as available in the SO42-time series from ice cores (a direct signal), and the high-resolution record of the climatic impact of past volcanism inferred in tree rings (a secondary signal) have been widely used to assign a 1628/1627 age to the eruption. The layer of ice in the GISP2 (Greenland) ice core corresponding to...

The White River Ash blasted from giant eruptions somewhere in today's Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains, drifted as far away as Ireland and Germany... Ash from the White River eruptions, possibly from 15,638-foot Mount Churchill or at least close to it, left an easy-to-see mark on eastern Alaska and northwestern Canada. Explorer Frederick Schwatka documented the ash in 1885 in his book "Along Alaska's Great River." People driving the Klondike Highway pass more than two feet of the whitish grit exposed in road cuts on their journey through the Yukon Territory... Froese and Jensen traveled in the Yukon to a branch of...