Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory146
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What’s Holding Water Conservation Back in Rockland County?
Rockland County’s main water provider, United Water NY, wants to build a treatment plant on the Hudson River that would deliver more freshwater to Rockland taps. As the project awaits state approval, a new debate on water consumption has emerged. Should people be encouraged, or even required, to use less? And if so, how?
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Seeking the Deadly Roots of the Dinosaurs’ Ascent
Over the past 450 million years, life on earth has undergone at least five great extinctions, when biological activity nosedived and dominant groups of creatures disappeared. The final one (so far) was 65 million years ago, when it appears that a giant meteorite brought fires, shock waves and tsunamis, then drastically altered the climate. That killed off…
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Along an Ancient Coast, Clues to a Global Extinction
Wave-washed sea cliffs along the coasts of western England and Wales are home to spectacular assemblages of rocks and fossils that may hold keys to understanding a sudden global extinction 201.4 million years ago that cleared the way for the rapid evolution of dinosaurs. Paleontologist Paul Olsen and geologist Dennis Kent of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty…
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The Triassic and Today: Hinge Points in Earth’s History
Paleontologist Paul Olsen has been investigating the causes of Triassic-Jurassic extinction–a turning point in earth’s history that wiped out many life forms and started the reign of dinosaurs. More than 200 million years separate us from this catastrophe (also called the End-Triassic Extinction), but it could contain some lessons for us today, says Olsen. For…
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Drilling into the Jurassic in New Jersey
One hour from New York City, where the suburbs of New Jersey give way to farms, a team of scientists are drilling for ancient rocks on the edge of a cornfield. The rocks hold clues about what the earth was like about 201 million years ago,during the great extinction that allowed dinosaurs to dominate. Listen…
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Cold Spell Gripped Europe 3,000 Years before ‘Little Ice Age,’ Says Study
Human civilization arose during the relatively balmy climate of the last 10,000 years. Even so, evidence is accumulating that at least two cold spells gripped the northern hemisphere during this time, and that the cooling may have coincided with drought in the tropics. Emerging research on climate during this Holocene period suggests that temperature swings…
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Shrinking Glaciers: A Chronology of Climate Change
During the last ice age, glaciers dominated New Zealand’s Southern Alps until warming temperatures some 20,000 years ago sent them into retreat. Scientists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, with their colleagues, are investigating the rocky remnants these glaciers left behind to learn precisely when the ice withdrew, and what glacier retreats globally can tell us about…
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Chasing Ghengis Khan
Once you, as an outsider, spend considerable time in Mongolia, especially during Naadam and especially in the open Gobi steppe with people who still live as their ancestors did centuries ago, you will also begin to chase Chinggis Khaan.
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In the Woods Listening for the Langseth
Our sensors record the same seismic signals as the ocean bottom seismometers the R/V Oceanus deployed, and we will combine the data later. They can detect R/V Langseth signals up to 100 miles inland! This is something extraordinary, and difficult to believe until seen.