Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist
Combining Science and Joyful Creativity
#365papers for February 2, 2017
What’s it about?
By measuring isotopes of carbon and oxygen from fossil snails, the authors were able to determine what the past climate in Sudan was like.Continue reading “Snails Tell Tales of Past Climate – #365papers – 2017 – 33”
#365papers for January 30, 2017
What’s it about?
Rare earth elements (REEs) are heavy elements that are uncommon in bones and teeth (composed of bioapatite mineral) in the living animal, but that are often concentrated in the mineral matrix during fossilization. In the past, REEs in conodont bioapatite were thought to be a good record of the REE content of the ocean waters in which they swam.Continue reading “Rare Earth Elements in Conodont Apatite – #365papers – 2017 – 30”
#365papers for January 28, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper applies the method described in yesterday’s #365papers, along with other methods to explore the uplift history of the central Andes.Continue reading “Growing Up Andes – #365papers – 2017 – 28”
#365papers for January 27, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper discussed in detail the protocol necessary to get reliable hydrogen isotopic data from volcanic glass. The authors check many variations and possible ways to isolate and clean the glass to determine which is the best way to do it.Continue reading “From Volcanic Glass We Can Estimate Ancient Elevation – #365papers – 2017 – 27”
#365papers for January 20, 2016
What’s it about?
This paper discusses how carbon from food becomes incorporated into the tooth enamel of mammals. More specifically, it examines the fractionation in isotopic ratios from food to enamel based upon groups of mammals having different sizes and physiologies.
Continue reading “You Are What You Eat, Plus a Few Permil – #365papers – 2017 – 20”
#365papers for January 19, 2017
What’s it about?
Sometime longabouts 2.3 and 2.1 billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere became oxygenated and organisms came about that utilized oxygen extensively in their metabolic processes. However, these organisms did not come to dominate on the Earth until a billion years later. During this Great Oxidation Event, despite increases in oxygen overall in the atmosphere and the oceans, there were periods of more or less oxygen, which made it hard to oxygen-dependent organisms to proliferate.
Continue reading “Back and Forth on the Oxygen Train – #365papers – 2017 – 19”
#365papers for January 16, 2017
What’s it about?
Ophiuroids are casually known as ‘brittle stars,’ sea stars with long, flexible arms. This paper discusses the skeletal structure of these arms (the ‘ossicles’ which are actually not bone but calcite) and how these structures dissolve on the ocean floor after the animal has died.Continue reading “When Skeletons Dissolve – #365papers – 2017 – 16”
#365papers for January 12, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper discusses the use of multiple geochemical methods to study an episode of extreme warmth in Earth’s history. The authors were able to determine the magnitude of the warming and used multiple methods to assign ages to the rocks involved. Using other chemical and geological methods, the authors were also able to show how this warming and subsequent cooling changed the overall climate in the interior of North America.Continue reading “Hot Times in the Eocene – #365papers – 2017 – 12”
#365papers – January 3, 2017
What’s it about?
Ethane is a molecule with two carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms. Most carbon in the universe is carbon-12, having six protons and six neutrons in its nucleus. Some carbon is carbon-13, with an extra neutron to make seven. A very, very tiny bit of carbon is carbon-14, with two extra neutrons. Carbon-12 and carbon-14 can replace carbon-12 in ethane. Likewise, hydrogen, an element with one proton and neutrons, can also have a neutron (deuterium or hydrogen-2), or maybe two neutrons (tritium or hydrogen-3). Atoms that vary in the number of neutrons in the nucleus are called isotopes. Some are stable (like carbon-12 and hydrogen), and others are radioactive. This study ignores carbon-14 and tritium, as they are both radioactive. Carbon-13 and deuterium are both stable.
The focus of any clumped isotope analysis is molecules with two of the more uncommon forms of an element. For ethane, that could be two carbon-13 atoms, two deuterium atoms, and one carbon-13 with a deuterium atom. Continue reading “Clumped Isotopes in Ethane – #365papers – 2017 – 3”
#365papers – January 2, 2017
What’s it about?
This paper presents evidence that marine anoxia (lack of oxygen in ocean water) may be the cause of the end-Guadalupian (middle Permian) mass extinction, using the appearance of pyrite (a reduced-iron mineral, FeS2), the shape and structure of pyrite, and isotopic values of sulfur to show this.Continue reading “The End-Guadalupian Mass Extinction, Pyrite, and Sulfur Isotopes – #365papers – 2017 – 2”
Penny Higgins - Storyteller • Artist • Scientist