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2022 Dedman College Research Round Up

Dedman College News- Here are some of the Dedman College 2022 research highlights. For the full article please visit SMU News: A study led by fire anthropologist Christopher Roos suggests bringing “good fire” back to the U.S. and other wildfire fire-prone areas, as Native Americans once did, could potentially blunt the role of climate in triggering today’s […]

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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Faculty News

Fossils reveal single tree species dominated Ethiopia rainforest

SMU News- The dominant tree species belonged within the legume family, which includes  beans, peas, and giant trees in tropical forests. “We have estimated the lake beds that contain the fossils were present for about 50,000 to 60,000 years,” said Bonnie Jacobs, an emeritus professor and paleobotanist at SMU (Southern Methodist University) and a co-author […]

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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Faculty News

A bright-green comet not seen since last ice age will be in D-FW skies this month

Dallas Morning News – Dallas scientists say the comet takes 50,000 years to make a trip around the sun. A bright-green comet that has not been seen since the last ice age will be visible in D-FW skies later this month. The comet, called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), was discovered by astronomers at the Zwicky Transient […]

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Anthropology Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Faculty News

Ancient Indigenous practice could curtail today’s wildfires

AXIOS – For 400 years, Native Americans appear to have blunted the impact of climate in triggering wildfires. Find out how, through this study led by SMU‘s Christopher Roos. A study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances found that historical Indigenous “cultural burning” curtailed wildfire patterns on local scales over a period of roughly 400 years […]

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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Faculty News

Length of a canoe = wingspan of this new pterosaur species

SMU’s paleontologists Louis Jacobs and Michael Polcyn helped find fossils of this flying reptile of the dinosaur. Learn more is Science Daily

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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Undergraduate News

The SMU Student Using Origami to Bring Dinosaurs to Life

D Magazine: Travis Nolan is the only person making show-quality origami dinosaurs in the university’s department of earth sciences. The Walt Disney movie Dinosaur wasn’t well received when it premiered in 2000, but it did change Travis Nolan’s life. He was 3 years old when his father gave him a gray and red rubber hand puppet of […]

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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Faculty News

NASA’s Artemis I Is a Go for Historic Launch to the Moon

How Stuff Works: Unfortunately, NASA scrubbed today’s Artemis launch due to engine issues. SMU’s Matt Siegler explains why this mission would have been so historic. https://science.howstuffworks.com/artemis-news.htm

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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Faculty News

New dinosaur species used fearsome claws to graze along the coast

SMU News Therizinosaurs were a large group of primarily herbivorous theropod dinosaurs (dinosaurs with hollow bones and three-toed limbs). Therizinosaurs were first discovered in Asia; the fossil records in Asian countries such as China and Mongolia are rich in therizinosaurus fossils, and fossil fragments have also been reported from Japan. Scientists from Japan and the […]

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Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Faculty News

Tonga volcano eruption was largest ever recorded in over a century, scientists say

Yahoo News The Hunga Tonga volcano eruption on 15 January this year was the largest explosion ever recorded in the atmosphere in over a century, scientists have explained. The explosion of the volcano in the South Pacific was the biggest ever recorded by modern geophysical equipment, said a study published last week in the journal Science. The atmospheric pressure wave […]

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Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Dedman College Research Earth Sciences Faculty News

Massive Hunga Volcano Eruption Sets New Standard for Crowdsourcing Scientific Observation of Seismic Events

Newswise The massive Jan. 15 eruption of the undersea Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the South Pacific Ocean was a once-in-a-century event that allowed an international group of 76 scientists using multiple forms of technology to crowdsource their data in ways never before possible. SMU geophysicist Stephen Arrowsmith, one of the co-authors of the eruption […]