Geology News - May 2005

News stories about geology and earth sciences in the world. News articles will be archived monthly. All links are to external sites.

May 25, 2005

Russia to resume Vostok drilling
Russian scientists have said they will resume drilling into Lake Vostok in the Antarctic, to within 100m of the waters that sit below its ice-cap.

Stegosaur plates used for ID, not defense, study says
Scientists have long puzzled over the sometimes bizarre ornamentation found on dinosaurs. Such features range from feathers, bills, and horns to spikes and plates, among others.

May 24, 2005

Oil giant backs museum project
A £3m scheme to turn a seaside museum into a gateway to Yorkshire's dinosaur coast took a huge leap forward yesterday when oil giant Shell became the first major corporate sponsor.

May 17, 2005

Glacier geology still cleaning Iowa groundwater
The geology left by the last glacier to advance into Iowa is helping clean nitrate from Iowa groundwater and producing methane gas, according to research by William Simpkins, an Iowa State professor of geological and atmospheric sciences.

May 9, 2005

Canadian company drills Guyana for oil
A Canadian oil company is to begin drilling in one of the world's largest remaining oil basins next week.

May 4, 2005

Zircon helps unveil early Earth's geology
Using the mineral zircon, scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and at the Australian National University said they have been able to determine conditions on Earth, within 200 million years of its formation, featured liquid-water oceans and continental crust.

May 2, 2005

Geologists' Find Is Evolutionary
Figuring out what happened hundreds of millions of years ago requires some guesswork, and that lack of precision plagues controversial theories about whether complex animals arose before or after the last global ice age, and whether sea ice actually did once cover even the tropics. Now MIT geologists have introduced more method to the madness, and in doing so have exciting new insights regarding ancient climate and early animals, and the link between the two.