Dr. Judge and Dr. Pollock will lead a “virtual field trip” today highlighting the places we will visit with new imagery and other technological wonders. This gives us a chance to repeat our schedule again, with links. Prior to class, be sure to examine the web resources for each site. Bring your laptop.
Geology in the News –
Remember the hypothesis of the Moon’s origin that involves a planet-sized body crashing into the early Earth? I just learned that planet has a name: Theia. Now isotopic evidence is telling us more about Theia, including that it had a composition similar to Earth, but not quite the same.
An extensive survey of the fossil record (and living organisms) shows conclusively that evolution favored larger animals in the sea. “In the past 542 million years, the average size of a marine animal has gone up by a factor of 150.” That’s cool. Bigger is almost always better in the ocean, and changing environmental conditions may have played a role.
More often than you think we find specimens squirreled away in museums that someone forgot to properly identify, and they turn out years later upon rediscovery to be new to science. The latest case is a fantastically-preserved ichthyosaur from the Jurassic of England. Museum collections are absolutely critical to our continuing enterprise of describing life’s diversity.