Why star dunes are rarely recognised in the rock record(nature.com)
nature.com
Why star dunes are rarely recognised in the rock record
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-53485-3
8 comments
Seeing the Scablands gives me these feelings too.
If you're not familiar with him, look up Central Washington University' Nick Zentner's channel on YouTube -- under his name, not the University's channel. In addition to earlier work, he just finished up an "A to Z" series on the scabland floods and related matters.
Very interesting, and he's a good egg.
Very interesting, and he's a good egg.
I'm a big fan already. I actually found him from his Cascadia Earthquake video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7Qc3bsxjI (on the University channel)
I highly suggest others check him out too if you're into this stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ7Qc3bsxjI (on the University channel)
I highly suggest others check him out too if you're into this stuff.
Been there, read carefully the entire paper --- couple of minor editorial mistakes and a doubt i express nelow, only. Nice study.
Fascinating to think what could have happened in Africa at the beginning of the Holocene: wildfire ravaging NW Africa and the West Africant Monsoon retreating to the South?
Fascinating to think what could have happened in Africa at the beginning of the Holocene: wildfire ravaging NW Africa and the West Africant Monsoon retreating to the South?
Maybe this is assumed if you know anything about dune science, but: exactly what is the ground penetrating radar measuring? Are these layers of different density/compaction of sand? How do they form?
Either way, I didn't know dunes could have that much detectable internal structure (though in retrospect I should have). Based on playing on beach dunes, I tend to think of dry dune sand as just a step above liquid.
Either way, I didn't know dunes could have that much detectable internal structure (though in retrospect I should have). Based on playing on beach dunes, I tend to think of dry dune sand as just a step above liquid.
Smithsonian magazine had an article on this finding some days ago
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-unravel...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-unravel...
If the dunes move, the sand remixes, and then, how can the strata be meaningfully explored?
TIL: OSL
The surprised and shocked to learn that thousands(!!) of feet of rock had been eroded away above the current ground level of the Grand Canyon to move that enormous volume of former solid rock elsewhere. It boggles the mind to imagine a mile of rock over a large region just being just moved to a new location.
And then surprise turns to astonishment, as they say, to learn that the Vishnu Schist unconformity at the bottom of the whole sequence records several hundred million years in two periods of the earth being a giant snowball covered in ice where the entire continental surface across the planet was sanded almost smooth by enormous Greenland scale glaciers.
Geology is crazy.