GeoJeopardy! Fridays #66

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because I'm working from home today.

- Down to Earth -

When it's closest to the Earth, this planet with a 687-day year is about 33 million miles away

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  Eratosthenes calculated this c. 230 B.C. using the difference between the sun's angles at 2 places during June

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The Lambert one of these formations in the Antarctic is over 250 miles long

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"Cast" in the role of the fourth most abundant element in the Earth's crust, its atomic number is 26

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A clue for alien astronomers looking for life on Earth is the large amount of this gas, CH₄, in the atmosphere

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All the answers as well as any other previous GeoJeopardy! questions can be found over at my website by clicking the link.

And if you enjoy this post as well as others, please consider subscribing to my blog via Google Reader or some other RSS feed so that way I better know my readership. Thank you.

Questions, images, and videos courtesy of j-archive.com

GeoJeopardy! Fridays #65

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because it is time for a break.

- Earth Science -

In a mining lode, the gangue is the junk & this is the mineral with the good stuff in it

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 Venice is sinking because Italy is actually part of this continent's plate & it's sliding under Europe's plate

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 It's not just oil -- Saudi Arabia has reserves of over 200 trillion cubic feet of this

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It Seismographers use the difference in speed between P waves & S waves to locate this point

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Some ocean sediment is radiolarian ooze, made of these parts of tiny protozoans

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All the answers as well as any other previous GeoJeopardy! questions can be found over at my website by clicking the link.

And if you enjoy this post as well as others, please consider subscribing to my blog via Google Reader or some other RSS feed so that way I better know my readership. Thank you.

Questions, images, and videos courtesy of j-archive.com

Dinos in Pop Culture Thursday

Dinos in Pop Culture, where we highlight each week some of the more obscure instances of dinosaurs used in the pop culture realm to sell anything from slippers to wedding cakes.

This week is the third post about the Utah Hogle Zoo's exhibit Zoorassic Park. I find it amazing how much Jurassic Park still influences our perceptions and displays of dinosaurs.

DINOSAURS: From Cultural to Pop Culture - ~400 BC: The Griffin

DINOSAURS! From Cultural to Pop Culture

Prehistoric Times 

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~400 BC
The Griffin

Apollo riding a griffin circa 380 BC (theoi.com).

Continuing along through Greek mythology we have the griffin. The griffin is a combination eagle head with a lion's body. I picked ~400 BC as the date for this stop because this is when the famous tale of Prometheus Bound was likely written by Aeschyles. In the story Prometheus is bound to a rock as torture for giving fire to humanity. While he is tied to this rock he is force to endure griffins repeatedly eating out his liver. Then, when they are done, the liver is allowed to grow back again, starting whole process over again. This isn't the first occurrence of griffins in history but it is one of the most prominent early examples so I figured this would be a good place to mark it. Within mythology, one of the principle traits of the griffin, other than its ability to fly, is that it is often found guarding treasure.

Protoceratops replica from Gaston Designs. 

One theory for the origin of the griffin is that the Greeks were trading with a group of people called the Scythian Nomads. The trade routes of these nomads traveled from Mongolia and down into Greece where they traded gold, among other things. The source location for their gold was likely at the base of some cliffs near the Gobi Desert. The gold would have likely eroded out of the Altai Mountains in Mongolia and settled on the fringes of the desert. Along side the gold deposits the traders found these bizarre looking skeletons, unlike what they have ever seen before. When coming across such things most people try to relate it to what they know. They recognized the beak, like that of a bird, and the bird-like-talons, but the size and shape of the body didn't make sense. This must be a beast that is a combination of a bird and something else, possibly a lion. We now know that the skeleton was that of a Protoceratops. The only question that now remained is what happened to the frill of the dinosaur in the nomads reconstruction? It is likely that if the frill was broken into pieces, the placement of the frill along the back could give evidence for the presence of wings. Once discovering these and creating the griffin myth, the nomads then transported this tale all over Europe during their travels (Mayor, 2000; Ancient Monster Hunters; Wikipedia). 

References:
Mayor, Adrienne. 2000. The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoceratops#Origin_of_griffin_myths  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6VLojsbAIQ
https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/K5.7.html
https://www.gastondesign.com/our-products/dinosaur-skeletons/

GeoJeopardy! Fridays #64

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because I said so.

- Pick a Planet -

Its "day" is 24 hours & 39 minutes

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It's the third largest in our solar system

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 It's never observable when the sky is fully dark

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It was the first to be discovered with the aid of the telescope

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Leda is its 13th moon

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All the answers as well as any other previous GeoJeopardy! questions can be found over at my website by clicking the link.

And if you enjoy this post as well as others, please consider subscribing to my blog via Google Reader or some other RSS feed so that way I better know my readership. Thank you.

Questions, images, and videos courtesy of j-archive.com

Dinos in Pop Culture Thursdays

Dinos in Pop Culture, where we highlight each week some of the more obscure instances of dinosaurs used in the pop culture realm to sell anything from slippers to wedding cakes.

This week is the second post about the Utah Hogle Zoo's exhibit Zoorassic Park. Want to play dress up as a dinosaur? Well now you can!!!

GeoJeopardy! Fridays #63

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because it's time for a break.

- Rock Your World -

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum has the state rock of Wisconsin; not to be confused with the state rock of New Hampshire, it's the red type of this

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Formed by magma, this one of the 3 major types of rock may be plutonic, or formed deep in the Earth

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 A schism is a division into faction; this type of rock, one letter different from "schism", has distinct layers

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Dacite is volcanic rock characterized by the presence of this common form of silicon dioxide

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Scattered material that can include sand & dust is called this "rock", after the layer below the Earth's crust

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All the answers as well as any other previous GeoJeopardy! questions can be found over at my website by clicking the link.

And if you enjoy this post as well as others, please consider subscribing to my blog via Google Reader or some other RSS feed so that way I better know my readership. Thank you.

Questions, images, and videos courtesy of j-archive.com

First UFOP Meeting of the Season

Announcing the first Great Basin Chapter meeting for UFOP for the season. Here are the details:

Instead of a regular speaker, we will have a number of the University of Utah students presenting posters of their current research in a program we have entitled a "Paleo Poster Presentation Palooza."

It will be in the department of Natural Resources in SLC. If you wish to join us, feel free. Contact me for the exact address if you need it.

Dinos in Pop Culture Thursdays

Dinos in Pop Culture, where we highlight each week some of the more obscure instances of dinosaurs used in the pop culture realm to sell anything from slippers to wedding cakes.



This week we are shifting focus to for a couple of weeks to the Utah Hogle Zoo's exhibit Zoorassic Park. The first posting was a radio ad that was played and it is very reminiscent of Jurassic Park. I found it a very clever clip personally. Clip courtesy of the Hogle Zoo.

A Question and Perhaps a Puzzle

I have a question for the geo- and paleo-minded folks out there:

How deep can a benthic diatom burrow?

Now the reason I ask this question is that the worm Paraonis makes spiral burrows (pictured above) that have been identified as "traps" for diatoms (Minter et al, 2006). This means that the diatoms must be able to burrow to at least the depth that the sprials are produced but I have read that diatoms have only been identified as burrowing up to 3 mm (which is a big deal for such a small creature) (Hay et al, 1993) but Paraonis burrows have been identified up to 10 cm down (Risk and Tunnicliffe, 1978). Quite a contrast.

This means that either they are wrong (this is not a diatom trap), they are eating other things (which they don't think so), or diatoms are burrowing deeper than I can find literature on.

So I was wondering if anyone has any knowledge of diatom burrowing depths. If you do please comment or send me an email.



Hay, S.I., Maitland, T.C., & Paterson, D.M., 1993, The speed of diatom migration through natural and artificial substrata: Diatom Research, v. 8, p. 371-384.

Minter, N.J., Buatois, L.A., Lucas, S.G., Braddy, S.J., & Smith, J.A., 2006, Spiral-shaped graphoglyptids from an Early Permian intertidal flat: Geology, v. 34, p. 1057-1060.

Risk, M.J., & Tunnicliffe, V.J., 1978, Intertidal spiral burrows; Paraonis fulgens and Spiophanes wigleyi in the Minas Basin, Bay of Fundy: JOURNAL OF SEDIMENTARY RESEARCH, v. 48, p. 1287-1292.

GeoJeopardy! Fridays #62

Time for GeoJeopardy! Fridays, because we are a laboring.

- Volcanoes -

Eruptions in 512 were so violent that Theodoric the Goth of Italy suspended taxes for those living on its slopes

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Lassen Peak in the southernmost part of this range was believed extinct until it erupted on May 30, 1914

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 This volcano on the southeast slope of Mauna Loa has had a hotel on its rim since 1866

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Figurative name of the volcanic belt that nearly encircles the Pacific Ocean

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This Philippine volcano's 1991 eruption was one of the largest of the 20th century

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All the answers as well as any other previous GeoJeopardy! questions can be found over at my website by clicking the link.

And if you enjoy this post as well as others, please consider subscribing to my blog via Google Reader or some other RSS feed so that way I better know my readership. Thank you.

Questions, images, and videos courtesy of j-archive.com

Dinos in Pop Culture Thursdays

Dinos in Pop Culture, where we highlight each week some of the more obscure instances of dinosaurs used in the pop culture realm to sell anything from slippers to wedding cakes.

I don't know what I can really say about this one? I found it in a gift shop in Moab, UT, but I definitely did not buy it.