Ocean acidification is the process by which oceanic waters progressively become more and more acidic, mostly as a result of absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide. To put that another way, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase, the process of ocean acidification will increase as well. To a point anyways. Acidic in this case is actually
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(This is Part 2 of the Ocean Acidification Causes, Effects, & Examples: Top 10 List, which had to be split in order to load properly. Click through to that article to read the introduction, and items 1 through 4 of the list.) Increase In Red Tide Events A likely co-occurrence with increasing ocean acidification will
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The subject of prehistoric seafaring, and the technology of ocean-worthy ships, is a highly contested one. Conventional knowledge says that the ability to travel long distances across oceans is a uniquely human ability, and a modern one at that. But actual archaeological evidence shows something else entirely — a situation whereby seaworthy ships have been
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Antarctica is an alien world in some ways. While many of the animals that visit its shores, or live on them, are recognizable, as are the plants, lichens, and algae there as well, the sheer intemperate quality of the place leads to blunt rearrangement of “ordinary” circumstance — with the place seeming familiar in many
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Ocean Acidification Causes, Effects, & Examples: Top 10 List
Ocean Acidification Effects, Causes, & Examples List Part 2
Ancient Seafaring — Neanderthals Sailing The Mediterranean 100,000 Years Ago; Prehistoric Travel & Cross-Continent Exchange; & The Reality Of Archaeological Evidence As Compared To Pop Culture Assumptions
Antarctica & Climate Change, What Would A Greened Antarctica Look Like? – Plants Of Prehistoric Antarctica, Meyer Desert Formation Biota, & Speculation On The Future
January 30, 2015 in Animals & Insects
Snakes are awesome. This article is going to go over some of the most interesting details of some of the most interesting snake species out there. Enjoy.
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January 30, 2015 in Animals & Insects
Spiders are one of the most successful, diverse, and sometimes profoundly weird, groups of animals of the world. They range the gamut from: carnivores to herbivores, the highly intelligent to the nearly vegetable-like, active hunters to ambush hunters, tree-dwellers to burrow-dwellers to underwater-dwellers, the highly compact/sturdy to the long/fragile, pitch-black to translucent-white, the camouflaged to the brightly colored, the bird-killing to the fly-catching, the tropical to the temperate, etc.
They are found on all continents except Antarctica, rank 7th in total species diversity amongst all other orders of organisms on Earth, and are found in nearly every type of habitat on the planet — other than in the oceans, and in the air. And they have been around for at least 318 million years. Some of the longer-lived species can live for at least as long as 25 years.
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January 29, 2015 in Geology & Climate, Humans
The extreme weather events of the years 535-536 — encompassing strangely low-temperatures, with snow even falling during the summer months in some locations; widespread crop-failures and famine; greatly diminished levels of sunlight; and accompanying geopolitical problems — were the most severe and long-lasting such occurrence of the last 2000 or so years in the Northern Hemisphere.
While it’s currently thought that the event was caused by an extensive atmospheric dust veil formed either, via a large volcanic eruption in the tropics, or the disintegration of a large amount of space-debris in the upper atmosphere, nothing is known for sure.
Evidence does point towards the volcanic explanation though — owing to the presence of substantial sulfate deposits in glaciers around the world corresponding to the years in question.
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January 26, 2015 in Animals & Insects, Fossils
A recent 160-million-year-old fossil found by a farmer in China represents what is — now — the oldest-record of post-natal parental care in the world, according to new research from
The fossil — which shows an adult Philydrosauras (a type of choristodere) accompanied by six juveniles — dates to the Middle Jurassic, and notably extends back-in-time the date of the earliest known post-natal parental care amongst animals.
January 21, 2015 in Geology & Climate, Humans, Plants
Soil erosion rates increased more than a 100-fold in the southeastern US after European colonization via the large-scale deforestation and industrial agriculture that accompanied it, according to new research from the University of Vermont.
Previous to European colonization, the region had seen rates of hill-slope erosion of around an inch every 2500-years — after colonization these rates skyrocketed to an inch every 25-years (with a peak in the late-1800s/early-1900s).
