GeologyRocks

 I came across this on the web, downloaded it, but didn't make a note of the source.

However I thought it might be of interest.

A huge asteroid will streak over the Atlantic Monday morning, coming within 7,500 miles of the surface. That is nearer to the earth than the moon. It is the fifth nearest such occurrence recorded. Article resource - Fifth closest Asteroid recorded shaves the passes earth by Newsytype.com.

We're in no danger, scientists say

I submit the url for the story recieved in an email from a google source

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/06/hawaiis-volcanic-hotspot-appears-badly-off-center.ars

   I will leave you to make up your own mind. I remain slightly skeptical.

For the benefit of anyone who hasn't yet seen the news:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090519-missing-link-found.html 

Whilst perhaps a little sensationalist it's interesting nonetheless...

The belief that dinosaurs underwent explosive species diversification just before they were wiped out is an illusion. A new study, published today, showed that the main evolutionary changes took place early in the dinosaur's history. The authors constructed a "supertree", which shows how species of dinosaurs evolved and carried out analysis on this to show when the major speciation events occurred.

The paper is published in Royal Proc. Soc. and the abstract and some more links are below:

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

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.

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."

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).