The deep Earth oxygen cycle addresses the origin and long-term exchange of oxidized species between the mantle and exosphere and creates the geochemic…
This map shows areas of seismic risk from high (red) to low (grayish-green). The map is from a 2007 report (click here to download) on seismic design categories in Washington. The map also shows potentially active faults from a separate 2014 report (click here to download). Earthquakes occur nearly every day in Washington. Most...
Click here to access our page-size geologic map of Washington state, which includes a brief explanation of Washington's geologic history.
Even though there are no volcanoes on the Olympic Peninsula, you can find lots of volcanic rocks on the beaches. This bizarre circumstance might have to do with how the ancient island transformed Washington state.
An international team of researchers has chosen the location which best represents the beginnings of what could be a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Working Group have put forward Crawford Lake, in Canada, as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene. A GSSP is an...
University of Texas at Austin has describing the first known Jurassic vertebrate fossils in Texas.The weathered bone fragments are from
Pallasite meteorites contain evidence for vastly different cooling timescales: rapid cooling at high temperatures (K/yrs) and slow cooling at lower te…
Canada's Crawford Lake may hold evidence that humans have fundamentally changed Earth enough to have started the Anthropocene, a new chapter in geologic time.
One day around 15,000 years ago, a wall of ice 2,000 feet tall and 30 miles wide suddenly broke wide open, and it unleashed the largest flood that we know of in the history of Earth. Come and hit the road with me as we search for the geologic fingerprints of the Missoula Ice Age Floods, and learn the story of one of the worst...
A precarious glacier in the crater of Mount St. Helens grows at an unprecedented rate, due to being in constant shade from the sun. It's posing potential danger to the valley below.
Threats, Resources, and more. Beautiful interactive map showing the geology of Washington State
Not all fossils are bones. (Or shells. Or teeth.) Most of us would agree that mammoth tusks and Stegosaurus spikes are pretty darn cool. And yet, the fossil record is not limited to old body parts. "Fossils" are defined as any "naturally preserved remains or traces of [life forms] that existed in the geologic past."
How did the Andes – the world's longest mountain range – reach its enormous size? This is just one of the geological questions that a new method developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen may be able to answer. With unprecedented precision, the method allows researchers to estimate how Earth's tectonic plates...
