Researchers used New Horizons images to identify evidence that liquid nitrogen may have flowed from beneath Pluto’s famous heart-shaped glacier. Dark markings across part of Pluto’s enormous heart-shaped glacier may record something unexpected beneath its frozen surface: liquid nitrogen moving upward and briefly flowing across the ice. Using observations from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, researchers [...]

Ireland’s iconic table mountain has a fascinating geological history.

Mount Toba was the biggest volcanic eruption in the last 2.6 million years, and some have suggested it nearly wiped out humanity. Around 74,000 years ago, a caldera on what is now Sumatra emptied thousands of cubic kilometers of magma in about two weeks, roughly a thousand times more than Mount Pinatubo spewed out in 1991. “People thought it might have caused massive cooling of the planet, and hence threatened the survival of our ancestors,” says Jinheum Park, a geoscientist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

Park and his colleagues went looking for the records of that catastrophe in the mud taken from the bottom of a small crater lake on the Kenya-Tanzania border. They found instead that the effects of the Mount Toba eruption lasted under two years and amounted to perhaps half a degree of cooling.

Muddy calendars

Volcanic eruptions inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it becomes a haze of tiny droplets that reflect sunlight back into space. Bigger eruptions eject more sulfur dioxide and, in principle, cause more cooling. But this trend stops working when the eruption exceeds a certain magnitude. “Bigger sulfate aerosols settle quickly, because they are heavier,” Park explains. This quick settling makes them less effective in scattering incoming solar radiation.

Read full article

Comments

© Wikimedia Commons

Mount Toba was the biggest volcanic eruption in the last 2.6 million years, and some have suggested it nearly wiped out humanity. Around 74,000 years ago, a caldera on what is now Sumatra emptied thousands of cubic kilometers of magma in about two weeks, roughly a thousand times more than Mount Pinatubo spewed out in 1991. “People thought it might have caused massive cooling of the planet, and hence threatened the survival of our ancestors,” says Jinheum Park, a geoscientist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

Park and his colleagues went looking for the records of that catastrophe in the mud taken from the bottom of a small crater lake on the Kenya-Tanzania border. They found instead that the effects of the Mount Toba eruption lasted under two years and amounted to perhaps half a degree of cooling.

Muddy calendars

Volcanic eruptions inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it becomes a haze of tiny droplets that reflect sunlight back into space. Bigger eruptions eject more sulfur dioxide and, in principle, cause more cooling. But this trend stops working when the eruption exceeds a certain magnitude. “Bigger sulfate aerosols settle quickly, because they are heavier,” Park explains. This quick settling makes them less effective in scattering incoming solar radiation.

Read full article

Comments

© Wikimedia Commons

Researchers used quartz from fossilized wood to trace how Europe developed. A polished piece of fossilized wood may look like little more than a decorative stone, yet the quartz inside it can preserve the history of an entire region for hundreds of millions of years. Geologist Dr. Steffen Trümper of the University of Münster and [...]

QUICK FACTS

Name: Uberaba Geopark (also known as "Terra dos Gigantes," or "Land of the Giants")

Location: Minas Gerais, Brazil

Coordinates: -19.71, -47.96

Why it's incredible: The park hosts prehistoric-fossil-bearing rock formations and overlies one of the world's biggest aquifers.

Nestled within Brazil's Cerrado tropical savanna — the second-largest biome in South America, after the Amazon rainforest — Uberaba Geopark is a time capsule from the Late Cretaceous period (100.5 million to 66 million years ago).

The geopark boasts abundant, well-preserved fossils from the last chapters of the nonavian-dinosaur era, according to UNESCO, earning it the nickname the "Land of the Giants," or "Terra dos Gigantes" in Portuguese. Paleontologists have discovered more than 10,000 fossils belonging to dinosaurs, prehistoric crocodyliforms (a group encompassing living crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials, as well as their extinct relatives), turtles and other ancient creatures within the park's boundaries.

One of the best-known discoveries is the fossil of Uberabatitan ribeiroi, a titanosaur measuring 89 feet (27 meters) long and 33 feet (10 m) tall, according to UNESCO.

The finds were clustered in impressive geological features, including the Serra da Galga formation and Serra Geral mountain range. These structures formed from ancient basalt flows, which came from giant volcanic eruptions that predate the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent 180 million years ago.

The park has the ideal conditions to preserve fossils because it alternated between shallow lagoons and river systems when the dinosaurs roamed the region, meaning the animals' remains were conserved in mud when they died.

Serra da Galga and Serra Geral also overlie one of the world's largest freshwater reservoirs, the Guarani aquifer, which supplies drinking water for more than 100 cities in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The Cerrado savanna, which houses the entire park, is a critical-yet-underprotected carbon sink that hosts more than 12,000 plant species and diverse animal life.

The "Land of the Giants" was added to UNESCO's list of geoparks in 2024 in recognition of the region's geological and natural heritage.

MORE INCREDIBLE PLACES

• Heaven Lake: China's deepest lake sits atop a colossal volcano and belongs mostly to North Korea
• Fingal's Cave: Scotland's 'cave of melody' where eerie echoes bounce off pillars of solidified lava
• Lençóis Maranhenses: Brazil's dune-filled expanse that sits at the intersection of 3 biomes

What is now the Uberaba Geopark was the birthplace of Brazil's modern livestock market, which is one of the biggest in the world. Farmers in the 19th century introduced zebu (Bos indicus) cattle from India because they are better suited to the climate in Brazil and require less food than common domesticated cattle (Bos taurus). Zebu cattle also produce lower greenhouse gas emissions than common domesticated cattle do, according to UNESCO.

Uberaba Geopark is open to visitors. There are several museums and trails to explore, including one that leads to the Vale Encantado, or "Enchanted Valley," which contains forests, waterfalls and prehistoric rock formations, according to the BBC.

Discover more incredible places, where we highlight the fantastic history and science behind some of the most dramatic landscapes on Earth.

Enormous rifts on Venus might still be widening.

Zhurong just found a tantalizing geological clue.

Globally, about 1 billion people live near glaciers and depend on glacial water. As temperatures continue to climb due to global warming, glaciers can become unstable and hazardous to nearby communities. These communities risk exposure to a series of linked processes, like ice collapse, flooding, and landslides, which could have life-threatening consequences. Scientists call these events catastrophic glacier hazard chains, or CGHC. So, a team of scientists in China sought to understand the driving forces behind these dangerous phenomena. 

The team focused on a CGHC event that occurred in 2018 at the Sedongpu Glacier, located in the Eastern Himalayas. During this event, the glacier obstructed the flow of 30 million square meters (more than 300 million square feet) of the Yarlung Tsanpo River, one of the main rivers within the region. 

To reconstruct the event, the team observed satellite images of the Sedongpu glacier over time, using a process called remote sensing. They used the images to calculate ice volumes, glacier velocities, and glacier movement between 1961 and 2018, to determine the glacier’s long-term physical properties and how they changed over time. They found that from 1968 to 2013, the Sedongpu Glacier shrank, or retreated, by over 6 football fields. It also lost ice and water volume and increased its velocity.

The scientists also measured earthquake waves on the Earth’s surface, or seismicity, to characterize any downslope rock or debris movements caused by the glacial retreat. They measured seismicity across 11 different seismic stations within 580 kilometers (about 350 miles) of the glacier. Then, they used this data to identify 2 distinct phases of the CGHC event on Sedongpu Glacier: the ice-rock avalanche and the debris flow.

When the ice-rock avalanche occurred, the team detected noticeable increases in seismicity, suggesting it lasted over 30 seconds. During those 30 seconds, over 8 million cubic meters (more than 280 million cubic feet) of ice fell onto the main glacier. The team recorded even more increases in seismicity during the debris flow, which lasted nearly 5 minutes. The debris from the avalanche hit the main valley glacier at nearly 300 kilometers (200 miles) per hour.

The researchers combined these data to describe how the 2018 CGHC event unfolded. First, the backward movement and shrinkage of the glacier produced an unstable sheet of ice hanging over a cliff face. The steep slope and large cracks in the ice caused an ice-rock avalanche. Debris from the avalanche then accumulated on the main glacier, causing it to move faster. As the main valley glacier moved downslope, it picked up even more debris from the bottom and sides of the glacial valley. The melting ice also increased the glacier’s velocity, and its movement eventually transitioned into a debris flow, which obstructed the Yarlung Tsangpo River. 

In total, the CGHC event in the Sedongpu Glacier travelled over 10 kilometers (6 miles) and moved down in elevation for over 3 kilometers (about 2 miles) at a velocity of about 100 kilometers (about 70 miles) per hour. The glacier accumulated enough debris and ice to fill thousands of Olympic-sized swimming pools. Imagine what this could do to a nearby village!

It’s difficult for scientists to estimate when CGHC events will occur, but this team proposed several factors that could help predict them. These factors included the size of the ice-rock avalanche and the glacier velocity, as well as the occurrence of earthquakes, temperature changes, and the melting of the glacier’s underside. They stated that these factors can combine to create a domino effect that drives the CGHC process. They recommended consistent glacial monitoring as temperatures continue to climb, in the Himalayas and globally. 

The team concluded that understanding CGHC events can help scientists mitigate glacial hazards and keep people safe, especially in mountainous areas such as the Eastern Himalayas. They stated that their findings illustrate the dangerous processes behind glacial melting, but further research is needed to accurately assess those processes and ensure nearby communities remain safe.

The post Can melting ice increase glacial hazards? appeared first on Sciworthy.

A recent study has delved into these fiery outbursts, offering unprecedented insights into the inner workings of this Icelandic volcano.

More than 500 meters beneath the Earth’s surface, a dark and ancient world teems with fungal life on a scale scientists had never imagined. A research team led by the University of Michigan has, for the first time, quantified the abundance of fungi in a deep subsurface site, reaching depths of up to 500 meters, […]

This is the first evidence that the mineral garnet may have been formed within the crust of Mars itself, heralding clues to the planet’s complex history.

The spots on a leopard, the stripes on a zebra, and the mask on a raccoon are all types of coloration in mammal fur, referred to as pelage. Scientists have struggled for a long time to understand how these colorations evolved. A team of researchers recently discovered how to reconstruct the colors of ancient mammal fur using cell structures that contain the chemical pigment melanin, known as melanosomes. They hope to use this understanding of ancient mammal pelage to determine how they lived and what their environments were like.

To decipher the color of ancient mammal fur, the researchers constructed a statistical computer model to predict their fur colors based on the shape of their melanosomes. First, they needed to understand how the shapes of melanosomes control fur color in modern mammals. To measure the length and width of the modern melanosomes, the scientists used a beam of electrons like a flashlight to map them in great detail, a technique called scanning electron microscopy.

They measured the length and width of 2,615 melanosomes from the fur of 116 different living mammal species, including a Red Panda, a German Shepard, and one or more species of most types in the mammalian classification. Then they recorded the wavelengths of light reflected off each melanosome using a microspectrophotometer. These wavelengths represented the exact color of hair from each melanosome they measured. This means they now had a quantitative measurement of the color of each hair to compare with its corresponding melanosome length and width.

When they examined their data, the researchers found that spherical melanosomes produced brighter fur colors, like reds and oranges, while elongated melanosomes produced darker fur colors, like browns and grays. The researchers plotted the microspectrophotometric measurements for each melanosome as a graph showing how much light it absorbed across each possible wavelength, creating reflectance curves. Based on these data, the researchers used computer software to create a statistical model that could predict reflectance curves, and therefore color, from melanosome shape alone.

Once the researchers created a model, they needed to find fossilized mammal melanosomes to predict their fur color. Mammal fossils are rare, and pieces of cells are only preserved in the most immaculate fossil deposits. In fact, these researchers only found 6 fossils of this caliber, from Mesozoic rocks deposited around 250 million years ago, soon after mammals evolved. 

The fossils came from 2 world-renowned deposits in Northeastern China, the Yanliao and Jehol biotas. They selected 5 previously studied fossils from these locations, including 1 specimen of Megaconus mammaliaformis, 1 specimen of Vilevolodon diplomylos, 2 specimens from the group Docodonta, and 1 specimen from the group Eutheria. All of these animals were small, rodent-like mammals. The researchers also discovered a new species of tree-dwelling mammal, Arboroharamiya fuscus.

The scientists used scanning electron microscopy to measure a total of 2,159 fossilized melanosomes to refine their color predictions. The fossilized melanosomes were all slightly elongated spheres and had far fewer differences in shape than in modern mammals. The researchers used their model to predict reflectance curves based on the shapes of the fossil melanosomes to determine the ancient mammals’ colors. They found that all the extinct mammals they examined likely had dark brown fur without any color patterns.

Based on these findings, the researchers suggested that most, if not all, early mammals were nocturnal, like many dark-colored mammals today. They suggested that this nocturnal lifestyle probably helped them survive the meteorite impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 100 million years later. While dinosaurs were unable to survive in the post-impact wasteland, these smaller, dark-colored mammals were more resilient and thrived in the aftermath. As mammals filled the ecological roles left by the dinosaurs, they evolved new color patterns, some based solely on camouflage, and others on new factors, like sexual selection and visual communication.

The researchers concluded that their model can predict fossilized mammal colors and help determine how these ancient animals lived. Notably, their data suggest that mammals likely stayed small and nocturnal throughout the Mesozoic until the dinosaurs were gone. Future researchers could use similar methods to uncover exactly how mammals evolved the colors we see today. For example, studying mammals closer to the impact event could reveal if it took a long time to develop diverse fur patterns, or if they began before the dinosaurs’ demise. Ultimately, similar studies could help determine whether the extinction of dinosaurs was necessary for the rise of mammals.

The post What colors were prehistoric mammals? appeared first on Sciworthy.

A glacier may have shortened the journey, but humans still moved the six-ton stone in place.

Some 66 million years ago, an asteroid impact wiped out three-quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth, most notably taking down the dinosaurs. But exactly how that impact caused those extinctions has been the subject of fierce debate. According to a new paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, the impact would have produced an immense cloud of dust that superheated the upper atmosphere, charbroiling living organisms unable to take shelter and igniting widespread wildfires.

As previously reported, the most widely accepted explanation for what triggered that catastrophic mass extinction is known as the “Alvarez hypothesis,” after the late physicist Luis Alvarez and his geologist son, Walter. In 1980, they proposed that the extinction event may have been caused by a massive asteroid or comet hitting the Earth. They based this conclusion on their analysis of sedimentary layers at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary(the K-Pg boundary, formerly known as the K-T boundary) found all over the world, which included unusually high concentrations of iridium—a metal more commonly found in asteroids than on Earth. (That same year, Dutch geophysicist Jan Smit independently arrived at a similar conclusion.)

Since then, scientists have identified a likely impact site: a large crater in Chicxulub, Mexico, in the Yucatan Peninsula, first discovered by geophysicists in the late 1970s. The impactor that created it was sufficiently large (between 11 and 81 kilometers, or 7 to 50 miles) to melt, shock, and eject granite from deep inside the Earth, probably causing a megatsunami and ejecting vaporized rock and sulfates into the atmosphere. It has been estimated that the impact would have released energy over a billion times higher than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Read full article

Comments

© Mark Garlick

QUICK FACTS

Where is it? Murgha Kibzai, Sulaiman Range, Pakistan [30.739354851, 69.50804296]

What's in the photo? Folded layers of rock left over from an ancient continental collision

Which satellite took the photo? NASA's Terra satellite

When was it taken? April 11, 2011

This striking satellite photo shows a multicolor "fan" of folded rocks sculpted by a longtime collision between two of Earth's tectonic plates.

The geological feature, known as an imbricate fan, is located around 3 miles (5 kilometers) east of the town of Murgha Kibzai in Pakistan's Balochistan province. The photographed section of folded rocks measures around 9 miles (15 km) across, but the fan stretches up to 55 miles (89 km) from end to end, well beyond the area in this image.

The dramatic structure sits at an altitude of around 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) in the Sulaiman Range, a series of mountains that covers around 2,500 square miles (6,500 square kilometers) of Pakistan and Afghanistan. ("Sulaiman" means "of Solomon," in reference to the biblical figure King Solomon, and the range's largest peak is Takht-e-Sulaiman, which translates to "Throne of Solomon.")

This is one of several unique features that emerged along the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates, which have been colliding for more than 60 million years. At one point during this tectonic tug-of-war, the two plates became somewhat intertwined, allowing the fan to take shape, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

"As India moved northward, it began to rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, wrenching the northwestern part of the Indian plate backwards into part of the Eurasian plate," Earth Observatory representatives wrote. "The countervailing forces put the rocks of the Sulaiman Range in a unique compressional vice, causing many of its faults to curve and stretch in convoluted ways."

The fan is made up of alternating layers of sandstone, which appear dark in the image, and limestone, which has a much lighter hue. These sedimentary rocks were formed by "thrust faults" that shot upward from the boundary between the Eurasian and Indian plates and became entangled as the boundary moved back and forth.

The satellite image is false-color, meaning it includes wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that are not normally visible to humans. This helps to accentuate the differences between the two rock types, although they can also be easily distinguished with the naked eye. Pockets of vegetation appear in red throughout the image.

The photo is a small part of a larger, wide-field image (see above), which showcases several other intriguing geological features across the Sulaiman Range in false color.

Continental collision

The collision between the Eurasian and Indian plates became inevitable around 80 million years ago, when dinosaurs still ruled Earth, according to the Earth Observatory. At this point, the pair became locked on a collision course, with each plate moving more than 8 inches (20 centimeters) per year — around twice the speed of the fastest tectonic plates today.

Around 60 million years ago, the plates slowly slammed together. Normally, this would cause the smallest tectonic plate to sink below the other. However, the two plates' massive size meant neither receded. Instead, the continental crust along the boundary grew thicker, and the ground buckled, folded and pushed upward.

This process created not only the Sulaiman Range but also the Karakoram (a huge mountain range that spans the borders of China, India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan) and the Himalayas — the two tallest mountain ranges on Earth, according to the Earth Observatory.

This collision continued at full speed for around 30 million years, before eventually slowing down. However, the two plates are still technically colliding today, making the region a major earthquake hotspot.

See more Earth from space

Shadowy tendrils of lava

A 2019 astronaut photo shows off ancient lava flows that once oozed down the jet-black slopes of the Toussidé volcano in northwestern Chad. An intriguing volcanic "skull" also lurks in the aerial image.

Volcanic 'Twin peaks'

A 2021 astronaut photo shows the surprising similarities between Mount Sundoro and Mount Sumbing, which lie at the heart of Java, Indonesia.

Concentric rocky rings

A 2025 astronaut photo shows a massif made of concentric mountain ridges in the Libyan desert. The rocky walls contain ancient artworks and are occasionally used to contain herds of grazing cattle.

Satellite monitoring has allowed an international team of scientists to follow in real time the evolution of an extraordinarily rare geological process in the subsurface of Ethiopia. Between December 2024 and March 2025, a volume of 1.4 cubic kilometers of magma moved along approximately 50 kilometers inside the Earth’s crust, without erupting at the surface. […]

A rare meteorite discovered in the Arizona desert is giving scientists one of their clearest windows yet into

Rising mantle temperatures and two heat surges may explain why some Hawaiian volcanoes grew exceptionally large. A 3500 km (2200 mile) trail of volcanoes records the Pacific plate’s slow passage over the Hawaiian hotspot. Instead of cooling through time as geologists have generally expected, the mantle plume beneath this chain appears to have warmed by [...]