Friday Headlines, January 15, 2016
THE LATEST IN THE GEOSCIENCES
Today’s round-up:
Capturing the K-T Extinction
Changing Human History, one Mammoth at a time
Behind a Shopping Center in New Jersey, Signs of a Mass Extinction
In a quarry behind a home improvement warehouse there is a fossilferous layer that may have been deposited at the time that the event happened that killed off the dinosaurs. There aren’t any dinosaurs in this deposit, however. This layer represents an ocean environment – which is good because fossils tend to be more abundant in such an environment.
The quarry in which the important fossil layer is exposed is now being purchased by Rowan University for preservation and continued research. That’s pretty awesome, if you ask me.
A Mysterious Mammoth Carcass Could Change Human History
A mammoth fossil was found in a remote part of Siberia, called the Yenisei Bay. This mammoth died by human hands about 45,000 years ago. And that’s a problem, because humans weren’t supposed to be anywhere near Yenisei Bay at that time.
This new find means that humans possessed the technology to survive in the harsh northern environments well before Archaeologists have previously thought. The implication is that humans might have migrated into North America much, much earlier than originally thought.
That could change everything.
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist 