Random Tusks

Sterling K. Webb In  February, 2006, SWRI published this paper in Science announcing the discovery of an new recent asteroid family associated with the asteroid 1270 Datura: http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~bottke/Reprints/Nesvorny_Vok_Bottke_Science_2006_Datura_breakup.pdf    [Tusk will drop on Scribd] A summary of its conclusions:    “The newly identified family is a group of six 1- to…

Click for larger image Melissa Scruggs of the U of Missouri gang kindly sent me this tantalizing taste of their recently reported find of a YD-start age radioactive green mat.  She said they have A LOT of samples they are working through and should report their findings in April.   Understandably, they chose to share only a single photo without much context before the results are published.

Settled: Dinosaurs Done in By Asteroid San Francisco Chronicle, March 4 A large international, multidisciplinary, team of scientists use stratigraphy, chemistry and sedimentary analysis to prove an extinction causing impact at the turning point of two geological and biological ages.  Younger Dryas Boundary Team, PNAS, 2007?  Nope.  KT Team iteration 2010, today in Science. A team of thirty…

I love this paper.  It’s in a great journal, chock full of well-sourced, multidisciplinary information, and written by a rock-solid expert in an immensely important field: Dendrochronology.  While other Dendrochronologists signed-up for the terribly political job of attempting to document slow and incremental temperature change over the ages, Mike Baillie became an expert in the…