This an archive of some interesting  news  items about recent discoveries or observations in geology

Posted 11-Jul-2014: The Life Scientific: Prof. Zoe Shipton. Jim Al-Khalili discusses earthquakes and fracking for gas with geologist Zoe Shipton (BBC Radio 4 - broadcast 8 July 2014).

Posted 19-Jun-2014: Discovery of first natural sample of Earth's most abundant mineral. Named Bridgmanite in honour of Nobel Prize-winning US Physicist. 

Posted 19-Jun-2014: Hidden 'ocean' lies deep within Earth. There may be three times as much water deep underground as exists in all the world's surface oceans.

Posted 17-Jun-2014: Antarctica melting from geothermal heat?  Thwaites Glacier, the large, rapidly changing outlet of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is not only being eroded by the ocean, it is being melted from below by geothermal heat.

Posted 20-May-2014: 'Biggest donosaur ever' discovered. Fossilised bones of a dinosaur believed to be the largest creature ever to walk the Earth have been unearthed in Argentina.

Posted 6-May-2014: Prehistoric North Sea 'Atlantis' hit by 5m tsunami. BBC report from the European Geosciences Union General Assembly includes an animation of the tsunami that flooded Doggerland and many North Atlantic coasts.

Posted 6-May-2014: How Mexicans know when an earthquake is coming. Residents of Mexico City are given almost two minutes warning before an earthquake arrives. How does it work? [The Economist 27-Apr-2014]

Posted 21-Apr-2014/updated 26-Apr-2014: 2.7-million-year-old forested landscape discovered under Greenland ice sheet. Glaciers are commonly thought to work like a belt sander. As they move over the land they scrape off everything — vegetation, soil, and even the top layer of bedrock. So U.S. geologists were greatly surprised to discover a Pleistocene tundra landscape preserved about 3 km beneath the Greenland ice sheet.

Posted 10-Apr-2014: Researchers reconstruct giant asteroid impact 3.26 billion years ago. A huge asteroid, up to five times larger than the rock thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs, crashed into Earth. The jolt, bigger than a 10.8 magnitude earthquake, set off tsunamis thousands of meters deep, the sky became red hot, the atmosphere filled with dust, and the tops of oceans boiled.

Posted 7-Apr-2014: Items presented at the 'geology in the news' session on 7 April 2014 included: the world's 10 riskiest cities; landslides in the geological record; the oldest known piece of Earth's crust; and new theories about the causes of the end-Permian mass extinction.

Posted 29-Mar-2014: Oldest known piece of Earth's crust. A tiny zircon crystal found on a sheep station in western Australia is now the oldest known piece of our planet, dating to 4.4 billion years ago. 

Posted 29-Mar-2014: Flooding in Christchurch, New Zealand. (From Dennis Kell).

Posted 29-Mar-2014: Rare mineral Ringwoodite points to ‘oceans’ beneath Earth. First terrestrial discovery of an extremely rare mineral called ringwoodite confirms theory about huge water ‘reservoirs’ 410 to 660 km beneath the surface of our planet. University of Alberta news release. Also BBC report and EarthSky.

Posted 17-Feb-2014: Many types of sand! A fascinating recently-published photo gallery of sands from around the world.

Posted 14-Feb-2014: Peridotite - a host rock of chromite, a source rock of diamonds, a potential sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide and the rock that makes up much of Earth’s mantle. (Not really news, but I thought I'd post a link to this interesting article anyway. It's well worth watching the embedded 3 minute video.)

Posted 12-Feb-2014: End-Permian mass extinction took only 60,000 years. Paleontologists have determined that the end-Permian extinction – the Earth’s most severe mass extinction that peaked about 252.3 million years ago – occurred over just 60,000 years, much faster than they previously believed.

Posted 28-Jan-2014: Grand Canyon 'formed recently'. New research suggests that most of the Grand Canyon was put in place just five to six million years ago, contradicting earlier studies suggesting it was 70 million years old.

Posted 22-Jan-2014: New ideas for how Earth core formed. Experiments by scientists from Stanford University on samples of iron and rock held at immense pressures have led to new ideas of how Earth's core formed. [BBC News website 12.10.13]

Posted 17-Jan-2014: Scientists discover giant trench under Antarctic ice. Scientists from several universities in the U.K. have discovered a massive ancient subglacial trough – deeper than the Grand Canyon.

Posted 14-Jan-2014: Supervolcano eruption mystery solved. Scientists have made a breakthrough in their efforts to understand what causes so-called supervolcanoes to erupt.

Posted 30-Dec-2013: Huge magma pocket lurks beneath Yellowstone supervolcano. The supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park is more than twice as big as previously thought.

Posted 10-Dec-2013: Natural gold particles in Eucalyptus leaves and their relevance to exploration for buried gold deposits. (From Alan Bimpson)

Posted 27-Nov-2013: Permian extinction caused by acid rain? MIT researchers find that rain as acidic as undiluted lemon juice may have played a part in killing off plants and organisms around the world during the most severe mass extinction in Earth’s history.

Posted 17-Nov-2013: 145-million-year-old seawater found. Researchers have found that groundwater more than 3,200 feet deep under the Chesapeake Bay is remnant water from the early Cretaceous North Atlantic Sea.

Posted 13-Nov-2013: 3.48 billion-year-old fossilized ecosystems found in Australia. New research has extended the geological record of microbially induced sedimentary structures by almost 300 million years, showing that complex mat-forming microbial communities likely existed 3.5 billion years ago.

Posted 11-Nov-2013: Discovering world's largest volcano. Open University researcher Mike Widdowson and colleagues report the discovery of a vast volcano on the Pacific Ocean floor. (From Jacquie Terry)

Posted 8-Nov-2013: New clues to formation of Earth’s crust. Recent lab studies of liquid basalt at high pressures and temperatures provide new clues to how Earth evolved billions of years ago.

Posted 7-Nov-2013: Clay may have been birthplace of life. A new research report indicates infertile clay in oceans of the early Earth may have been the birthplace of life. 

Posted 24-Oct-2013: When lava and water meet without an explosion. Recent work by researchers from University at Buffalo explores some lava pillars in Iceland that appear to have formed when lava met water without the usual explosion occurring.

Posted 15-Oct-2013: New idea for how Earth’s core formed. An iron melt network helped grow Earth’s core, a Stanford study suggests.

Posted 2-Oct-2013: Mars rover uncovers a suprisingly earth-like rock. Analysis of a rock on Mars by the rover Curiosity suggests parts of the red planet may be similar to Earth.

Posted 24-Sept-2013: The largest deep earthquake ever recorded. A magnitude 8.3 earthquake that recently struck deep beneath the Sea of Okhotsk has left seismologists struggling to explain how it happened. At a depth of about 609 kilometers (378 miles), the intense pressure on the fault should inhibit the kind of rupture that took place.

Posted 2-Sept-2013: Mega-canyon discovered beneath Greenland ice. Data from a NASA airborne science mission has revealed an immense and previously unknown canyon, 750 km long and up to 800m deep, hidden under the Greenland ice cap.

Posted 24-July-2013: Life on land dated at 2.2 billion years. A new study, led by geologist Gregory J. Retallack of the University of Oregon, has presented evidence for life on land that dates back 2.2 billion years and almost half way back to the inception of the planet.

Posted 18-June-2013: New 'embryonic' subduction zone found. A new subduction zone forming off the coast of Portugal heralds the beginning of a cycle that will see the Atlantic Ocean close as continental Europe moves closer to America.

Posted 16-June-2013: A new world map showing the locations of recoverable shale oil and shale gas resources. This map, together with much more information is given in a report by the US Energy Information Administration.

Posted 3-May-2013: Earth's core far hotter than thought. New measurements suggest the Earth's inner core is far hotter than prior experiments suggested, putting it at 6,000C - as hot as the Sun's surface.

Published 30-Apr-2013: Landslides in Dorset and Hants. [Published 3-May-2013: BBC video]

Published 26-Apr-2013: Unique chemistry reveals eruption of ancient materials once at Earth’s surface. New study supports theory that Earth’s earliest crust was folded back into its mantle and returned to the surface in volcanoes.

Published 21-Mar-13: Discovery of 'lubricant' for Earth's tectonic plates. Scientists have discovered a layer of liquified molten rock in Earth’s mantle that may be responsible for the sliding motions of the planet’s massive tectonic plates. The finding may carry far-reaching implications, from understanding basic geologic functions of the planet to new insights into volcanism and earthquakes. [Also see presentation posted 15-Apr-2013.]

Published 6-Mar-2013: Video of powerful eruption of Mount Etna on 5-6 March 2013.

Published 29-Nov-2012: Experimental evidence for the age of the Grand Canyon.

Published 17-Aug-2012: Evidence for plate tectonics on Mars.

Published 8-Feb-2012: New model of how supercontinents are formed.