GeologyRocks

A Precambrian impact as been 'discovered' in NW Scotland.

The Stac Fada Member of the Torridonian Stoer Group, previously believed to be a volcanic mudflow deposit has been reinterpreted as a fossilised ejecta blanket from a meteorite impact about 1.2 billion years ago.

Geology article abstract
http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1130%2FG24454A.1

BBC News Story
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7314329.stm

Good page on previous interpretation with outcrop and thin section photos from Oxford Uni.
http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~oesis/nws/nws-a98-st1.html#field

Hello again and welcome to the fourth GeologyRocks Newsletter. In this newsletter, I'd thought I'd recap the last year's activity comparing them against the plan, as it's been a year since this version of GeologyRocks was released. However, as per usual first here's new content that's been put on over the last couple of months.

The World Digital Magnetic Map of the World has just been released by the Commission for the Geological Map of the World. The BBC News website has the story and a stunning downloadable pdf version.

Time for the third GeologyRocks newsletter - later than scheduled, but good things come to those who wait. In this newsletter, I'm covering a new review system that will be put in place for content. I'll be interested to see what people think of this. Of course we start with a look at the new content over the last couple of months.

A new, massive duck-billed dinosaur species has been discovered in Utah. Gryposaurus monumentensis (Gryposaurus “hook-beaked lizard”, monumentensis from Grand Staircase- Escalante National Monument where the fossils were found) from the Late Cretaceous had over 800 teeth.

More details at Utah Museum of Natural History

Geology gives a helping hand to archaeology again.

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070514/full/070514-2.html

"Historians need not be quite so impressed by Alexander the Great's defeat of the island of Tyre in 332BC. Geological studies of the region show that Alexander's army had help reaching the island, in the form of a natural land-bridge lying just a metre or two below the water's surface."

2 months already since the last newsletter!? Time flies when you're busy. Welcome to the second GeologyRocks newsletter. This newsletter contains an update of new material on the site since last time and details on how to keep up-to-date with new content on the site. We close with some forthcoming news about the site, but we'll leave that until later.

An attempt to describe 1.8 million species launched yesterday which will provide descriptions, images, videos and sounds of all the species online. Unlike wikispecies, this will be compiled by experts and, hopefully, will be of higher quality and consistancy. Rod Page, a taxonimist from the University of Glasgow, has already tried something like this called iSpecies (more detail on Rod's blog).