Oakland has performed many large feats of civic strength on its way to greatness. I think the largest one was turning a shallow slough into a world-class harbor. It began with a pair of big stone walls.

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We are continuing our plate tectonics theme with "The continental jigsaw puzzle; can you reassemble a super-continent from a 'jigsaw puzzle'?"

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September 2026 has been a pretty dispiriting month for American paleontologists. In early September, Drexel University gave a surprise announcement that the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP) would be closing its doors at the end of the month - now just a few days away. And, just this week, news leaked that the Sternberg Museum of Natural History at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, would be closing sometime in the next 3-8 months. These are both important museums, and the ANSP is one of the oldest museums in the country - founded in the early 19th century. You may be asking yourself the following questions: 1) What the hell is going on? and 2) What can I do about it? I will address each of these below.

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Noteworthy storms, tropical and otherwise, continued to pepper the Eastern and Central Pacific and North Atlantic on Sunday. The big landfall threat is Hurricane Polo (see below), but several other systems were making news this weekend - including...

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Albuquerque's South Valley, September 2026. I took advantage of the break between Storm 2 and Storm 3 to wander the South Valley this morning. It was a great ride - lots of ditch banks, some weird urbanity (the Walmart parking lot where Frank H...

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I am taking a break this week and plan to post again on Sunday, October 4....

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Atlantic storms will be short-lived, while powerful Pacific hurricanes persist and the Northeast battles a potent nor'easter....

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A new crater on the Moon, super-hot amoebas, and Hubble marks an orbital milestone as well as one of your own....

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The post Book review: Our Frozen Planet appeared first on AntarcticGlaciers.org.

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New analyses of ancient cattle, sheep and goat bones suggest that the rapid spread of introduced livestock 1,200 years ago coincided with forest loss and population declines among large native herbivores....

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Hello Luigi! Thank you for agreeing to this GeoTalk interview. Could you briefly introduce yourself and your background to our readers?

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What if we brought all four major space-geodetic techniques together on a single spacecraft for the first time? ESA's Genesis mission, expected to launch in 2028, will do just that, combining Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR), DORIS and Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) on one carefully calibrated platform. Well before launch, scientists are investigating how this unprecedented configuration could strengthen the terrestrial reference frame and improve our understanding of the changing Earth.

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Göran Ekström tracks incidents like landslides and glacier collapse using tools once used only to monitor earthquakes....

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Nolo threatens Hawaii with flooding rain and dangerous surf, while powerful Hurricane Polo could make another impact to México and more tropical systems take shape....

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Led by researchers at NOAA and Columbia University, the Constraining Ocean Carbon with Optimized Observing (COCO2) project will use uncrewed surface vehicles to reduce uncertainty in estimates of the ocean carbon sink....

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There is a slow-moving silver shape drifting over the forests and cities of North Rhine-Westphalia. From the ground, it looks almost ceremonial -- a Zeppelin NT gliding through the air as though time had reversed by a century. Inside, sensors are humming. And Eva Pfannerstill is watching the data appear.

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Polo churns off Mexico with up to eight inches of rain and 46-foot seas, while another strengthening tropical system threatens eastern Hawaii with dangerous surf and rainfall of 10 to 30-plus inches....

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The post Future global glacier extinction appeared first on AntarcticGlaciers.org.

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A creature's internal temperature plays a big role in its behavior. Over the past decades our understanding of the behavior of various dinosaur groups has evolved. A combination of bone histology (patterns of bone growth as an individual develops from juvenile to adult), energetics gleaned from anatomy and ecology, and fossil geographic distribution all suggest that at least some dinosaur groups evolved an ability to regulate their internal temperature (endothermy).There is evidence from isotope work that some species within Theropod, Sauropod, and Ornithician dinosaur groups maintained a high body temperature. In contrast, specific biomolecules and inference of ecologic preference suggests that many other dinosaur lineages did not maintain endothermic metabolism. Dinosaur physiology and thermal regulation continues to be studied and debated.What has been missing is a consistent and reliable method for ascertaining their body temperature.Recently Randon J. Flores and coworkers applied a technique known as carbonate clumped isotopes to fossil teeth (enamel) of specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex to determine its body temperature. The sample was from the Cretaceous age Hell Creek Formation, North America. This technique measures the abundance of C13-O18 bonds in carbonate minerals that make up the enamel. These bonds of the heavier isotopes of carbon and oxygen are more common at lower temperatures. They are not affected by the isotope composition of the reacting fluids and is a direct indicator of the temperature of mineral formation.

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In this essay, Jean-Baptiste Koehl reflects on the origin of a 100-year-old divide within the geoscience community and explores how tectonics and paleontology may be brought closer together through the concept of orogenic bridges.

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A new study blames 122 companies for contributing to severe drought in the region....

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 In the opening of my most recent post where I wrote about the essential role in science of challenging conclusions,  I quoted Carl Sagan from The Demon-Haunted World (1996) about certitude being applicable only to pure mathematics.  I had only read the excerpt from Sagan's book that Richard Dawkins included in his always rewarding The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008).  I decided to read the book as a bit of after-the-fact due diligence.  What if I'd been wrong about what Sagan was saying?  (I wasn't.)

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Back in July (25 & 26), Marc and Natee attended DinoCon 2026 in Birmingham, the successor to DinoCon 2025 in Exeter, which was the spiritual successor to all those TetZooCons. It was huuuge. In Episode 52 of our questionably punctual podcast, they di...

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In a rare expression of forecast confidence, NHC predicted Polo would become a Cat 5 at a time when it was still a tropical storm....

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My Utton Center posse is throwing a book launch party Friday (Sept. 25, 2026, 12:30 p.m.) at the Guild in Nob Hill. When we were conjuring up a title over the summer, we came up with "A conversation about the past, present, and future of Albuque...

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