geochronology
eklemetti | May 28, 2009Here's some news bits for all you volcanophiles. Enjoy the weekend!
Ubinas in Peru steaming away in June 2007. Image courtesy of Eruptions reader Mike Lyvers.
There has been a lot of press lately on the theory that a large eruption from an ancient volcanic field in China (the 260-million-year-old Emeishan volcanic province of southwest China) could be the culprit in the grand Permian extinction. I have to admit, I've only skimmed the surface of this study, but the work lead by Dr. Paul Wignall (a paleontologist, not a volcanologist - not that there is anything wrong with that) seems to…
eklemetti | January 1, 2009
Right as Yellowstone is getting interesting (or at least had signs of interest), Eruptions is going on a bit of a break again starting January 2. This time it is because I'm off to the North Island of New Zealand to do some field work. I'll be headed to Tarawera (hopefully both the 1305 and 1886 eruption deposits), Taupo, Tongariro, the area around Rotorua and maybe even White Island (amongst other). I won't have my MacBook, but I will have my iPod Touch, so I'll try to keep track and make brief posts if something big comes up, but feel free to use this post as a clearinghouse for any news…
eklemetti | September 29, 2008
The Discovery Channel brings us a story on how the exact (well, semi-exact if you read the article) date for the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius has been nailed down by dating, well, fish sauce. The findings? The records of antiquity were right, it was probably around August 24, 79 A.D. and if you get to page 2, you'll find that the researchers - workers at the Pompeii's Applied Research Laboratory - say the fish sauce dates the eruption to somewhere in mid-August to mid-September. Why is this important? Recent archeological studies at Pompeii found a coin that dates to October of 79 A.D., so…
laelaps | October 23, 2007Creationists have been strangely quiet today, their silence all the more odd because it's Bishop Ussher Day! According to Young Earth Creationist dogma the world just celebrated it's 6,011th 6,010th birthday (or a formless, empty Earth just celebrated it's birthday, the job not being finished until a few days later, of course), the creation week beginning the night prior to October 23, 4004 B.C. We know this is preposterous now, of course, but in Ussher's time figuring out the date of the Genesis narrative was big business, many theologians using various sorts of numerology in an attempt to…