Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 16 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Earth Changes
Map

Cow Skull

Fossilised skull of 'sea monster' pliosaur found on Dorset coast

Haroon Siddique
Guardian.co.uk
Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:44 UTC
Image
© Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Norway
An artist's impression of a 45-ton pliosaur attacking
Ferocious prehistoric predator's skull is 2.4 metres and could belong to creature measuring up to 16 metres in length

The fossilised skull of a "sea monster", which may be the largest of its type ever found, has been unearthed on the Dorset coast.

The skull from the ferocious prehistoric predator the pliosaur is 2.4 metres long and could belong to a creature measuring up to 16 metres in length from tip to tail and weighing up to 12 tonnes.

Pliosaurs were a form of plesiosaur, a group of giant aquatic reptiles that terrorised the ocean 150m years ago, around the same time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

They had short necks and huge, crocodile-like heads that contained immensely powerful jaws and a set of huge, razor-sharp teeth.
      Read More...
Frog

Rainforest treaty 'fatally flawed'

Michael McCarthy
The Independent
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:04 UTC
rain forest
© Getty
Regenerated palm oil trees are seen growing on the site of destroyed tropical rainforest in Kuala Cenaku, Indonesia

Climate summit loophole lets palm oil producers cull vital wilderness

A vital safeguard to protect the world's rainforests from being cut down has been dropped from a global deforestation treaty due to be signed at the climate summit in Copenhagen in December.

Under proposals due to be ratified at the summit, countries which cut down rainforests and convert them to plantations of trees such as oil palms would still be able to classify the result as forest and could receive millions of dollars meant for preserving them. An earlier version of the text ruled out such a conversion but has been deleted, and the EU delegation - headed by Britain - has blocked its reinsertion.

Environmentalists say plantations are in no way a substitute for the lost natural forest in terms of wildlife, water production or, crucially, as a store of the carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere when forests are destroyed and intensifies climate change.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Pennsylvania: 3 More Earthquakes Rock York County


WGAL 8 News
Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:00 UTC
Image
© WGAL
Scale
Three more earthquakes were reported in the Dillsburg, York County, area over the weekend.

Earthquake experts said that they all happened within a six-minute period at about 7:20 a.m. Sunday.

The first tremor was a magnitude 2.8, the second was a 1.8 and the third was a 2.6.

Some residents said that the quakes shook pictures on their walls.

"This time they are precipitated by a lot of rumbling and rolling we are hearing. So, we knew another was coming and in fact it did," said resident Candace LaGaza.

There have been more than 600 earthquakes in the area in the past year.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

US: Out of control blaze in Santa Cruz Mountains

David R. Baker
San Francisco Chronicle
Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:43 UTC
A fire driven by strong winds burned through 600 acres of the Santa Cruz Mountains this morning, burning two buildings, threatening 85 others and forcing evacuations.

Roughly 80 to 100 people were told to leave their homes in the area of Maymens Flat Road, Highland Way and Ormsby Cutoff. No injuries had been reported by mid-day, but two outbuildings and one trailer had been destroyed.

First reported around 3 a.m., the so-called Loma Fire started near Maymens Flat Road, close to the area that burned in the Summit Fire of 2008.

By late this morning, 937 firefighters were attacking the blaze, using 100 fire engines, eight air tankers and five helicopters, among other resources. But the fire remained completely uncontained.

The Summit Fire, which started in May 2008, burned more than 4,000 acres, injured 12 people and destroyed 132 homes and outbuildings, state fire officials said.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

Indonesia: Earthquake Magnitude 7.0 - Banda Sea


US Geological Survey
Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:40 UTC
Image
© USGS
Date-Time:
Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 14:40:44 UTC

Saturday, October 24, 2009 at 11:40:44 PM at epicenter

Location:
6.161°S, 130.346°E

Depth:
138.5 km (86.1 miles)

Distances:
230 km (145 miles) NNW of Saumlaki, Tanimbar Islands, Indonesia

365 km (225 miles) SE of Ambon, Moluccas, Indonesia

700 km (435 miles) N of DARWIN, Northern Territory, Australia

2610 km (1620 miles) E of JAKARTA, Java, Indonesia
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

6.2 earthquake strikes Afghanistan and Pakistan


Associated Press
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:13 UTC
Image
© USGS
A strong earthquake centered in the towering Hindu Kush mountains shook a wide area of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan early Friday, swaying buildings in the Afghan and Pakistani capitals.

There were no initial reports of damage or casualties from the quake, which struck about 12:21 a.m. Afghan time (1951 GMT, 3:51 p.m. EDT Thursday).

However, the temblor was centered in a remote mountain area where communications are poor and reports of casualties take time to reach the capital.

The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 and was centered in the mountains about 167 miles (268 kilometers) northeast of Kabul and 140 miles (230 kilometers) west of Mingaora, Pakistan, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Buildings shook in the Pakistani cities of Peshawar and the capital Islamabad, and the quake was felt as far east as Lahore near the Indian border, Pakistani television stations reported.

The Afghan Interior Ministry said it had no immediate reports of deaths or damage.
      Read More...
Frog

'Gatorade for frogs' could stymie fungal killer

Bob Holmes
New Scientist
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:04 UTC
The fungus now decimating frog populations around the world does its damage by impairing the animals' ability to absorb electrolytes through their skin. This discovery may eventually lead to treatments that make the disease less lethal.

Biologists now generally agree that the fungal disease known as chytridiomycosis is responsible for the worldwide die-off of frogs that has caused a conservation crisis in recent years. However, the fungus affects only the outer layers of the skin, leaving few clues to why it is so lethal.

But now Jamie Voyles of James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and colleagues have an answer. In diseased frogs, the skin's ability to take up sodium and potassium ions from the water decreases by more than 50 per cent, they found. As a result, the concentration of these two ions in the frogs' blood fell by 20 and 50 per cent, respectively. This ion loss - similar to the hyponatraemia that a human athlete might experience from drinking too much water too fast - eventually leads to cardiac arrest and death.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

California's coastal waters a dump for fishing gear

Shanta Barley
New Scientist
Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:01 UTC
For the first time, scientists have used a submersible to investigate the debris piling up in deep-water canyons off the coast of California. To their surprise, they found that recreational fishing gear accounted for 93 per cent of the underwater trash.

"Sometimes we had to change the path of the submersible to avoid becoming entangled with recreational fishing lines and nets," says Diana Watters of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service in Santa Cruz, California.

"This is a really surprising result," says Anthony Jensen, who studies fisheries and artificial reefs at the National Oceanographic Centre in Southampton, UK, and was not involved in the survey. "Who would have thought that recreational fishers would account for more rubbish in a deep-sea ecosystem than the commercial fishing industry?"

Trash density

Watters believes that previous attempts to quantify underwater garbage by trawling with nets have underestimated the true scale of the problem because that method doesn't pick up all of what's down there and so cannot provide good information about the density of the debris. Nor can nets be dragged over rocky sea floors as they can snag on pinnacles.
      Read More...
Better Earth

Hunting Banned in Parts of Austria After Hailstones Kill 90 Percent of Wild Game


Telegraph.co.uk
Mon, 19 Oct 2009 23:48 UTC
Hunting has been banned in parts of Austria after freak storms with tennis ball-sized hailstones killed up to 90 per cent of the wild game population.

Sepp Eder, the hunting chief, said : "Animals sought shelter in farms, in fields of grain but the hail was so heavy it smashed right into them. It may take five years for animal numbers to recover, if they ever do so."

Farmers are believed to have suffered more than £60 million in damages to crops and buildings.

Hundreds of deer were discovered either dead or so badly injured they had to be put down by wildlife experts.

In the country's rural Salzburg province, 90 per cent of pheasants and 80 per cent of hares were killed in the hail storms.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

South of Panama: Earthquake Magnitude 6.1


US Geological Survey
Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:36 UTC
Image
© USGS
Date-Time:
Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 00:51:39 UTC

Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 06:51:39 PM at epicenter

Location:
6.827°N, 82.576°W

Depth:
10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program

Region:
SOUTH OF PANAMA

Distances:
180 km (110 miles) S of David, Panama

210 km (130 miles) SSE of Golfito, Costa Rica

225 km (140 miles) SW of Santiago, Panama

410 km (255 miles) SW of PANAMA CITY, Panama
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts