Geology Professor Honored at AGU Meeting

Thomas S. Bianchi, the Jon L. and the Beverly A. Thompson Endowed Chair of Geological Sciences, was honored at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting in December 2019 as an AGU Fellow.

This award is given to AGU members who have made exceptional scientific contributions and gained prominence in their respective fields of Earth and space sciences. Established in 1962, the fellow program recognizes no more than 0.1 percent of total membership annually.

The full article can be read here: https://news.clas.ufl.edu/geology-professor-honored-at-agu-meeting/

Mathematical Time Machine

Taking the laws of physics and reversing them to understand what happened in the Earth’s interior 55 million years ago. UF Geologist ALESSANDRO FORTE’s along with fellow researchers collaborate to reconstructed the phenomena occurring under the North Atlantic Ocean 55 million years ago, during a period known as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM),  that may have led to a period of rapid global warming or a “greenhouse gas ‘burp”.

The full story can be viewed here:

UF Publications | Looking Deep Inside The Earth

 

Forte. A reconstruction on the 3-D structure of the Earth's mantle below the North Atlantic 55 million years ago.
Forte. A reconstruction on the 3-D structure of the Earth’s mantle below the North Atlantic 55 million years ago.

Why Apollo’s Moon Rocks Still Matter

Samples brought back by the Apollo missions have fueled scientific discoveries for 50 years — but there’s still more to learn, says University of Florida astrogeologist Steve Elardo.

The full story can be viewed here:

https://news.ufl.edu/2019/07/apollos-moon-rocks-still-fuel-planetary-science/

The role of geomagnetic field intensity in late Quaternary evolution of humans and large mammals

The role of geomagnetic field intensity in late Quaternary evolution of humans and large mammals

A recent study by James Channell and L. Vigliotti published in Reviews of Geophysics outlines possible linkages between the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field and human and mammal evolution.

The strength of Earth’s magnetic field in the past, recorded by rocks and sediments, provides a proxy for past flux of ultra-violet radiation (UVR) to Earth’s surface due to the role of the field in modulating stratigraphic ozone. About 40 thousand years ago, mammalian fossils in Australia and Eurasia record an important die-off of large mammals that included Neanderthals in Europe. In the Americas and Europe, a large mammalian die-off appears to have occurred ~13 thousand years ago. Both die-offs can be linked to minima in Earth’s magnetic field strength implying that UVR flux variations to Earth’s surface influenced mammalian evolution. For the last ~200 thousand years, estimates of the timing of branching episodes in the human evolutionary tree, from modern and fossil DNA and Y-chromosomes, can be linked to minima in field strength which implies a long-term role for UVR in human evolution. New fossil finds, improved fossil dating, knowledge of the past strength of Earth’s magnetic field, and refinements in the human evolutionary tree, are sharpening the focus on a possible link between UVR arriving at the Earth’s surface, magnetic field strength, and events in mammalian evolution.

The full article can be read here:  https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2018RG000629