Of course the best fossils are always ✨Paleozoic plants✨ This is a polished section of a Psaronius tree fern from the early Permian (~290 million years) of the Czech Republic 🌿⛏️ We can see the root mantle (R) and the base of several leaves (arrows). Happy #FossilFriday & #FernFriday! #paleobotany

We are gambling away our health, says Monte Carlo risk modelling.

The grasslands of western India are, in the popular imagination, the remains of woodlands lost under British rule — areas to be reforested, not conserved. But an analysis of medieval songs and stories reveals the grasslands predate British colonization.

One last blast for the PM crowd: Eruptions is back! I have resurrected my blog and I will start (mostly) regularly updating with volcano news, research and culture. Check it out: eruptions.site/2026/01/28/w...

A couple of January lesser mohavea wildflowers sneaking in a bloom, Death Valley

No one ever thought that preservation was because of 'tough bodies'. It was always about trying to understand the specifics of taphonomy and diagenetic processes. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202... paper- pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

I'm kind of surprised to see that map from USGS. It basically treats each aquifer (or section of the aquifer for the High Plains) like a bathtub and shades the whole thing by calculated volume of depletion. That's not how it works. Mapping it that way is misleading. The fairly severe drawdown

Links to Geology-related Open GIS Data open.substack.com/pub/ikegami/...

I appreciate this from @us.theconversation.com by Jonathan Paul. However, I think it’s making a mistake I commonly hear geologists make with regards to current events. I have a hunch that this mistake is one of the reasons geology programs are struggling 🧵🛠️🪨🧪 theconversation.com/greenland-is...

Anirudh Kanisetti echoing the complaint of pretty much every South Indian who has had to study "Indian history" at a non-state board school.

Fantastic new slab of eensy little sea urchin fossils from Oregon, courtesy of @smilodonichthys.bsky.social #FossilFriday ⚒️

Folding in Proterozoic South Delhi Fold Belt, Kumbhalgarh Fort, Rajasthan. Check out the polyphase folding (red arrow). Pic- Vivek Singh Grewal. #FridayFold

Archean Jagannathpur volcanics from Singbhum Craton, India. SEM BSE image- Pyroxene fibres with plagioclase. www.geosocindia.org/index.php/jg...

This is the reality we face. It is not physically possible to limit warming to 1.5°C. The required levels of emission cuts are impossibly steep drilled.media/news/cop30-g...

Thin Section Thursday! A cross-polarized image of a chondrule from the Allende (CV3) meteorite. The thin blades are crystals formed from the melt at very high cooling rates. FOV ~ 0.7 mm. Contributed by Bill Menarik. Send images & caption to akoziol1 at udayton dot edu. #thinsectionthursday

My top 10 books for 2025

Good company. @anjanakhatwa.bsky.social @laurapoppick.bsky.social

Possible desiccation cracks (mudcracks) in rock found by the Mars Curiosity Rover this week. flic.kr/p/2rLi9Lh flic.kr/p/2rLoXm3 flic.kr/p/2rL7ntV

Documenting ancient firemaking. A broader perspective from @johnhawks.net on the "earliest evidence of ignition" news reports of firemaking ~400k. www.johnhawks.net/p/sparking-a...

Our updated 54" x 36" Geology of Plate Tectonics chart reflects recent advances in geological thought over the past 40 years. Grab one below! English (folded): geosociety.co/3KO5SNe Spanish (folded): geosociety.co/3ML4Guy #PlateTectonics #Tectonics #Volcanism #Metamorphism #Seismicity #Geothermal

Thought provoking and well explained by Steven M Stanley. "Why the punctuational model of evolution is valid". www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

@bsky.app #FossilFriday Arborea arborea, one of many impressive enigmatic Ediacaran fossils from the Flinders Ranges on display at the South Australian Museum in Adelaide.

Cool paper documenting ecological insights about Indian tropical savannas in traditional literature between the 13th and 20th century. Grassland-scrubland biomes are often misconceived as deforested and/ or degraded wastelands. So, important paper. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Manufacture of synthetic Ernestite thr' high temp sintering of sand & laterite raw material. Wonderful mineralogy and geochem study of origin of cylindrical drill bits used during the Bronze Age Harappan Civilization. www.nature.com/articles/s40... @johnhawks.net

Delhi Radioactive!

A nanometer thin coating of amorphous silica may be protecting phosphatized embryo-like microfossils from diagenetic changes in Ediacaran Doushanto Formation. pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

that's a fun thought experiment ... just last week we were discussing the 'life' span and fate of sedimentary basins in my class, this plot from a study a couple decades ago emphasizes the uniqueness of intracratonic basins in terms of longevity pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/...

This paper raises the possibility that lichens had evolved by the late Ordovician, contemporary with earliest vascular plants 🧪⚒️ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Submarine carbonate cemented talus as carbon sinks. "Estimates.. suggests that uptake of CO2 by breccia offsets 20% of the CO2 outflux associated with volcanism during formation of the crust itself with major implications for carbon budgets". communities.springernature.com/posts/how-we...

In Idaho's Clarkia fossil beds, ~15-million-yr-old leaves are sandwiched between rock. When exposed, the leaves momentarily retain their original colors—red, copper, sometimes even a chlorophyllic hue—before oxidizing and fading. A sedimentary scrapbook. Reverse polaroids from Earth's deep past.

Lateral moraines, older and more recent, of the Pindari Glacier. The older moraines, further from the glacier (~3 km), have eroded into gentler rounded linear ridges. The recent moraines retain a sharp edged relief. Kumaon Himalaya. November 2025.

The Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau are only the most *recent* of the big mountain systems to have formed in south-central Asia. Well before India began to collide with Asia, the Gangdese Volcanic Arc had reached Andes-like proportions, standing ~3.5 km tall.

Billion year old shallow water stromatolitic carbonates contact metamorphosed. Green layers with diopside and occasional grossular garnet. Sedimentary layers are preserved, including ripples! Franklin Mountains, El Paso, Texas.

Ptygmatic folding, along with a slight pinch and swell structure, in a quartz vein intruding Greater Himalaya gneiss. Pindari Valley, Kumaon Himalaya. November 2025. #FridayFold

Today's haul. @[email protected] @rapiduplift.bsky.social @maitrey.bsky.social @mrajshekhar.bsky.social

Wow. I did not know that Alfred Russell Wallace (co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection) wrote a book in 1904 about the biological potential for life on other planets, and I've just found this extraordinary paragraph setting out the insanity of atmospheric pollution [1/3]. In 1904!

The one on Sir John Mortimer remains my favorite. @dlknowles.bsky.social www.economist.com/obituary/200...

New Blog Post- There is a large difference between stratigraphic thickness and elevation in the Deccan Volcanic Province. A quick look at lava stratigraphy and regional structure. @peterbrannen.bsky.social rapiduplift.substack.com/p/deccan-tra...

Latest Newsletter- The total thickness of the Deccan Volcanics is more than 10,000 feet. But the highest elevation is 5400 feet. Why? A quick look at lava stratigraphy and regional structure. rapiduplift.substack.com/p/deccan-tra...

"Oil companies don’t care about the first 40 meters of the core" But archaeologists do. Sumerian civilization may have been jump-started by the rise and fall of tides. www.science.org/content/arti...

I was recently interviewed by @drlauraguertin.bsky.social as part of her 'Tales from the Deep' series focused on the people involved in scientific ocean drilling ⚒️🧪⛴️ –– lots of great stories from many others there to check out archive.storycorps.org/interviews/i...

Such hyperbole reg enhanced rock weathering for CO2 removal. Weathering of entire planet's surface rock removes < 1 Gt of CO2/yr But < 1% of Deccan Basalt, which is a tiny fraction of Earth's surface, will remove all human generated CO2 (40 Gt yr! ) 🙄 Times of India, Oct 19.

4,300 cubic kilometres! The scale of this ancient submarine landslide is hard to comprehend. Imagine a pile of rock 1 km wide and 1 km tall, extending from New York to Los Angeles. That would be a little smaller than this landslide.

Oxidised (left) and unoxidised 3.2 billion year old banded iron formation. These samples are from drill core and were only a couple of meters apart. #geology #paleontology

Also, eukaryotes evolved during the Proterozoic. How can that be boring?

The Geology of Mumbai- Megapolis Mumbai is firmly situated within the Deccan Volcanic Province. Yet, it has a distinctive geology due to differences in lava composition and tectonic setting. Add to that is a coastline shaped by Holocene sea level changes. rapiduplift.substack.com/p/the-geolog...

The state of education in India: Government-run schools are underfunded, lack infrastructure and good teachers. Private schools are now doing this 👇🏾 scroll.in/article/1087...

You heard it straight from Kennedy himself: Gold Standard Science is actually just data fabrication.

Our new #OpenAccess paper 'Sediment-stressed reefs over the past 420 Myr', led by Tanja Unger, has been published in The Depositional Record Understanding natural and anthropogenic sediment influx to reef systems is critical to planning protection strategies onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Also added this book to the wishlist, given how educational Siddharth Kara's Cobalt Red was. www.theariofrancos.com/extraction