Tag: Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences

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Ancient “Sea Monsters” Reveal How the Ever-Changing Planet Shapes Life, Past and Present

Never-Before-Seen Fossils From Angola Bring a Strange Yet Familiar Ocean Into View

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will open a new exhibition Nov. 9, 2018 revealing how millions of years ago, large-scale natural forces created the conditions for real-life sea monsters to thrive in the South Atlantic Ocean basin shortly after it formed. “Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas” will offer visitors the opportunity to dive into Cretaceous Angola’s cool coastal waters, examine the fossils of striking marine reptiles that once lived there and learn about the forces that continue to mold life in the ocean and on land.

Over 134 million years ago, the South Atlantic Ocean basin did not yet exist. Africa and South America were one contiguous landmass on the verge of separating. As the two continents drifted apart, an entirely new marine environment — the South Atlantic — emerged in the vast space created between them. This newly formed ocean basin would soon be colonized by a dizzying array of ferocious predators and an abundance of other lifeforms seizing the opportunity presented by a new ocean habitat.

“Because of our planet’s ever-shifting geology, Angola’s coastal cliffs contain the fossil remains of marine creatures from the prehistoric South Atlantic,” said Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the museum. “We are honored by the generosity of the Angolan people for sharing a window into this part of the Earth’s unfolding story with our visitors.”

For the first time, Angolan fossils of colossal Cretaceous marine reptiles will be on public display. Through Projecto PaleoAngola — a collaboration between Angolan, American, Portuguese and Dutch researchers focused on Angola’s rich fossil history — paleontologists excavated and studied these fossils, which were then prepared for the exhibition by a team of scientists and students at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas. The exhibition was made possible by the Sant Ocean Hall Endowment Fund.

“Fossils tell us about the life that once lived on Earth, and how the environments that came before us evolve over time,” said Louis Jacobs, professor emeritus of paleontology at SMU and collaborating curator for the exhibition. “Our planet has been running natural experiments on what shapes environments, and thereby life, for millions of years. If it weren’t for the fossil record, we wouldn’t understand what drives the story of life on our planet.”

The exhibition will immerse visitors in this Cretaceous environment with lively animations and vivid paleoart murals of life beneath the waves — courtesy of natural history artist Karen Carr — that bring to life 11 authentic fossils from Angola’s ancient seas, full-size fossil reconstructions of a mosasaur and an ancient sea turtle, as well as 3-D scanned replicas of mosasaur skulls. Photomurals and video vignettes will transport visitors to field sites along Angola’s modern rugged coast, where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists unearth the fossil remains from this lost world.

A Strange but Familiar Ocean
“Sea Monsters Unearthed” paints the picture of a flourishing ocean environment that in some ways will look strange to modern eyes, yet still bears striking similarities to today’s marine ecosystems.

Peculiar plesiosaurs — massive reptiles with long necks, stout bodies and four large flippers — swam alongside 27-foot-long toothy marine lizards called mosasaurs and more familiar creatures like sea turtles. From surprising mosasaur stomach contents to the one of the oldest known sea turtles found in Africa, fossils and reconstructions of these species will offer visitors a fuller picture of their remarkable life histories and the ecosystems they were a part of.

The exhibition will also explore deeper similarities across the ecology and anatomy of ocean animals then and now. After the marine reptiles that dominated these waters went extinct 66 million years ago, modern marine mammals would not only later replace them as top predators in the world’s ocean, but also converge on many of the same body shapes and survival strategies.

The Forces That Shape Life, Then and Now
This unique period in Earth’s history reveals how key geologic and environmental forces contributed to the early establishment and evolution of life in the South Atlantic. As Africa and South America drifted apart and a new ocean basin formed, trade winds blowing along the new Angolan coastline created the conditions for upwelling, an ocean process that drives the circulation of nutrients from the deep ocean to its surface. These nutrients in turn jump-started the food web that attracted the ferocious marine reptile predators featured throughout the exhibition.

Just as tectonic forces helped create this Cretaceous marine environment, they also shaped the arid coastal cliffs where the fossils are found today. Starting 45,000 years ago, a geologic process called uplift caused Earth’s crust to bulge along Angola’s coast, lifting part of the seafloor out of the water — and along with it, the layers upon layers of fossil-filled rocks where Projecto PaleoAngola scientists work.

Though humans do not operate on a tectonic scale, their actions also have major impacts on ocean life. Humans are now the ocean’s top predators, with one-fifth of the world’s population relying on food from upwelling-based ecosystems. Scientists caution that with such great pressure on modern upwelling-based fisheries, overfishing could change the future of life in the ocean by threatening fish populations, marine ecosystems and even human health. — National Museum of Natural History

About the National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. The museum is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world with approximately 7 million annual visitors from the U.S. and around the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.

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WFAA Verify: Is West Texas sinking?

A new research report, from Southern Methodist University and funded by NASA, found a “…large swath of West Texas oil patch is heaving and sinking at alarming rates.”

WFAA-TV Channel 8’s Verify journalist David Schechter covered the phenomenon of the ground sinking at alarming rates in West Texas, according to the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The Dedman College researchers are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images that discovered decades of oil production activity in West Texas have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines and storage tanks.

Schechter’s WFAA ABC report, “Verify: Is West Texas sinking?” aired April 18, 2018.

Lu and Kim reported their findings in the Nature publication Scientific Reports, in the article “Association between localized geohazards in West Texas and human activities, recognized by Sentinel-1A/B satellite radar imagery.”

The researchers analyzed satellite radar images that were made public by the European Space Agency, and supplemented that with oil activity data from the Railroad Commission of Texas.

The study is among the first of its kind to identify small-scale deformation signals over a vast region by drawing from big data sets spanning a number of years and then adding supplementary information.

The research is supported by the NASA Earth Surface and Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at SMU.

An earlier study by the researchers revealed significant ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. The SMU geophysicists found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Watch the WFAA Verify news segment.

EXCERPT:

By David Schechter
WFAA-TV Verify
A new research report, from Southern Methodist University and funded by NASA, found a “…large swath of West Texas oil patch is heaving and sinking at alarming rates.”

To find out if West Texas is sinking, first I’m going to the guy who wrote the report, Dr. Zhong Lu. He’s a geophysicist who studies the earth using satellites.

By shooting a radar beam from space — like a measuring stick — a satellite can calculate elevation changes down to the centimeter. Lu did that over a 4000 square mile area.

“This area is sinking at half meter per year,” Dr. Lu says.

That’s more than a foot-and-a-half. Lu says, that’s alarming because that much change to the earth’s surface might normally take millions of years.

One of the images in his reports shows an area of sinking earth, near Wink, TX from 2011. Five years later, the satellite shows the sunken area had spread almost 240%.

“In this area that you are studying, is oil and gas the cause of the sinking?” I ask.

“Related to the oil and gas activities,” he says.

“Oil and gas activity is causing the sinking in West Texas?” I clarify.

“Yes,” he says.

Watch the WFAA Verify news segment.

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The Guardian: Texas sinkholes — oil and gas drilling increases threat, scientists warn

Ground rising and falling in region that has been ‘punctured like a pin cushion’ since the 1940s, new study finds.

The Guardian and other news outlets covered the West Texas sinkhole and ground movement research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.

The Dedman College researchers are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images that shows decades of oil production activity in West Texas have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines and storage tanks.

An earlier study by the researchers revealed significant ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. The SMU geophysicists found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

The Guardian article by journalist Tom Dart was published March 27, 2018, “Texas sinkholes: oil and gas drilling increases threat, scientists warn.”

Other coverage includes articles by Forbes, Tech Times, Phys.org, Ecowatch, Fox San Antonio, The Dallas Morning News and the Texas Tribune.

Others include EarthSky.org, Live Science, KERA News, San Antonio Express, Houston Chronicle, Science Daily, The Energy Mix, Digital Journal, Homeland Security News Wire and the Science Bulletin.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported their latest findings in the Nature publication Scientific Reports, in the article “Association between localized geohazards in West Texas and human activities, recognized by Sentinel-1A/B satellite radar imagery.”

Lu and Kim reported the earlier findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research is supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Tom Dart
The Guardian
Oil and gas activity is contributing to alarming land movements and a rising threat of sinkholes across a huge swath of west Texas, a new study suggests.

According to geophysicists from Southern Methodist University, the ground is rising and falling in a region that has been “punctured like a pin cushion with oil wells and injection wells since the 1940s”.

There were nearly 297,000 oil wells in Texas as of last month, according to the state regulator. Many are in the Permian Basin, described in a Bloomberg article last September as the “world’s hottest oil patch”.

But the Southern Methodist report warns of unstable land and the threat of sinkholes.

“These hazards represent a danger to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as potential pollution of ground water,” Zhong Lu, a professor, said in a statement.

Wink – a tiny town 400 miles west of Dallas best known as the childhood home of the singer Roy Orbison – attracted national headlines in 2016 when the same scientists warned that the land between two expanding sinkholes a mile apart was deteriorating, risking the formation of more sinkholes or even the creation of a colossal single hole.

Injection of wastewater and carbon dioxide increases pore pressure in rocks, a likely cause of uplift. Lu told the Guardian that cracks and corrosion from ageing wells may help explain the sinking.

A “subsidence bowl” near one of the Wink sinkholes has sunk at a rate of more than 15.5in a year, probably as a result of water leaks through abandoned wells causing salt layers to dissolve, the report found. Elsewhere, a lake formed after 2003 as a result of sinking ground and rising water.

Read the full story.

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Radar images show large swath of West Texas oil patch is heaving and sinking at alarming rates

Analysis indicates decades of oil production activity have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines and storage tanks

Two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas, may just be the tip of the iceberg, according to a new study that found alarming rates of new ground movement extending far beyond the infamous sinkholes.

That’s the finding of a geophysical team from Southern Methodist University, Dallas that previously reported the rapid rate at which the sinkholes are expanding and new ones forming.

Now the team has discovered that various locations in large portions of four Texas counties are also sinking and uplifting.

Radar satellite images show significant movement of the ground across localities in a 4000-square-mile area — in one place as much as 40 inches over the past two-and-a-half years, say the geophysicists.

“The ground movement we’re seeing is not normal. The ground doesn’t typically do this without some cause,” said geophysicist Zhong Lu, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU and a global expert in satellite radar imagery analysis.

“These hazards represent a danger to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as potential pollution of ground water,” Lu said. “Proactive, continuous detailed monitoring from space is critical to secure the safety of people and property.”

The scientists made the discovery with analysis of medium-resolution (15 feet to 65 feet) radar imagery taken between November 2014 and April 2017. The images cover portions of four oil-patch counties where there’s heavy production of hydrocarbons from the oil-rich West Texas Permian Basin.

The imagery, coupled with oil-well production data from the Railroad Commission of Texas, suggests the area’s unstable ground is associated with decades of oil activity and its effect on rocks below the surface of the earth.

The SMU researchers caution that ground movement may extend beyond what radar observed in the four-county area. The entire region is highly vulnerable to human activity due to its geology — water-soluble salt and limestone formations, and shale formations.

“Our analysis looked at just this 4000-square-mile area,” said study co-author and research scientist Jin-Woo Kim, a research scientist in the SMU Department of Earth Sciences.

“We’re fairly certain that when we look further, and we are, that we’ll find there’s ground movement even beyond that,” Kim said. “This region of Texas has been punctured like a pin cushion with oil wells and injection wells since the 1940s and our findings associate that activity with ground movement.”

Lu, Shuler-Foscue Chair at SMU, and Kim reported their findings in the Nature publication Scientific Reports, in the article “Association between localized geohazards in West Texas and human activities, recognized by Sentinel-1A/B satellite radar imagery.”

The researchers analyzed satellite radar images that were made public by the European Space Agency, and supplemented that with oil activity data from the Railroad Commission of Texas.

The study is among the first of its kind to identify small-scale deformation signals over a vast region by drawing from big data sets spanning a number of years and then adding supplementary information.

The research is supported by the NASA Earth Surface and Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at SMU.

Imagery captures changes that might otherwise go undetected
The SMU geophysicists focused their analysis on small, localized, rapidly developing hazardous ground movements in portions of Winkler, Ward, Reeves and Pecos counties, an area nearly the size of Connecticut. The study area includes the towns of Pecos, Monahans, Fort Stockton, Imperial, Wink and Kermit.

The images from the European Space Agency are the result of satellite radar interferometry from recently launched open-source orbiting satellites that make radar images freely available to the public.

With interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR for short, the satellites allow scientists to detect changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye and that might otherwise go undetected.

The satellite technology can capture ground deformation with an accuracy of sub-inches or better, at a spatial resolution of a few yards or better over thousands of miles, say the researchers.

Ground movement associated with oil activity
The SMU researchers found a significant relationship between ground movement and oil activities that include pressurized fluid injection into the region’s geologically unstable rock formations.

Fluid injection includes waste saltwater injection into nearby wells, and carbon dioxide flooding of depleting reservoirs to stimulate oil recovery.

Injected fluids increase the pore pressure in the rocks, and the release of the stress is followed by ground uplift. The researchers found that ground movement coincided with nearby sequences of wastewater injection rates and volume and CO2 injection in nearby wells.

Also related to the ground’s sinking and upheaval are dissolving salt formations due to freshwater leaking into abandoned underground oil facilities, as well as the extraction of oil.

Sinking and uplift detected from Wink to Fort Stockton
As might be expected, the most significant subsidence is about a half-mile east of the huge Wink No. 2 sinkhole, where there are two subsidence bowls, one of which has sunk more than 15.5 inches a year. The rapid sinking is most likely caused by water leaking through abandoned wells into the Salado formation and dissolving salt layers, threatening possible ground collapse.

At two wastewater injection wells 9.3 miles west of Wink and Kermit, the radar detected upheaval of about 2.1 inches that coincided with increases in injection volume. The injection wells extend about 4,921 feet to 5,577 feet deep into a sandstone formation.

In the vicinity of 11 CO2 injection wells nearly seven miles southwest of Monahans, the radar analysis detected surface uplift of more than 1 inch. The wells are about 2,460 feet to 2,657 feet deep. As with wastewater injection, CO2 injection increased pore pressure in the rocks, so when stress was relieved it was followed by uplift of about 1 inch at the surface.

The researchers also looked at an area 4.3 miles southwest of Imperial, where significant subsidence from fresh water flowing through cracked well casings, corroded steel pipes and unplugged abandoned wells has been widely reported.

Water there has leaked into the easily dissolved Salado formation, created voids, and caused the ground to sink and water to rise from the subsurface, including creating Boehmer Lake, which didn’t exist before 2003.

Radar analysis by the SMU team detected rapid subsidence ranging from three-fourths of an inch to nearly 4 inches around active wells, abandoned wells and orphaned wells.

“Movements around the roads and oil facilities to the southwest of Imperial, Texas, should be thoroughly monitored to mitigate potential catastrophes,” the researchers write in the study.

About 5.5 miles south of Pecos, their radar analysis detected more than 1 inch of subsidence near new wells drilled via hydraulic fracturing and in production since early 2015. There have also been six small earthquakes recorded there in recent years, suggesting the deformation of the ground generated accumulated stress and caused existing faults to slip.

“We have seen a surge of seismic activity around Pecos in the last five to six years. Before 2012, earthquakes had not been recorded there. At the same time, our results clearly indicate that ground deformation near Pecos is occurring,” Kim said. “Although earthquakes and surface subsidence could be coincidence, we cannot exclude the possibility that these earthquakes were induced by hydrocarbon production activities.”

Scientists: Boost the network of seismic stations to better detect activity
Kim stated the need for improved earthquake location and detection threshold through an expanded network of seismic stations, along with continuous surface monitoring with the demonstrated radar remote sensing methods.

“This is necessary to learn the cause of recent increased seismic activity,” Kim said. “Our efforts to continuously monitor West Texas with this advanced satellite technique can help sustain safe, ongoing oil production.”

Near real-time monitoring of ground deformation possible in a few years
The satellite radar datasets allowed the SMU geophysicists to detect both two-dimension east-west deformation of the ground, as well as vertical deformation.

Lu, a leading scientist in InSAR applications, is a member of the Science Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO (called NISAR) InSAR mission, set for launch in 2021 to study hazards and global environmental change.

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A/B. The satellites orbit 435 miles above the Earth’s surface. Sentinel-1A was launched in 2014 and Sentinel-1B in 2016 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

The Sentinel-1A/B constellation bounces a radar signal off the earth, then records the signal as it bounces back, delivering measurements. The measurements allow geophysicists to determine the distance from the satellite to the ground, revealing how features on the Earth’s surface change over time.

“Near real-time monitoring of ground deformation at high spatial and temporal resolutions is possible in a few years, using multiple satellites such as Sentinel-1A/B, NISAR and others,” said Lu. “This will revolutionize our capability to characterize human-induced and natural hazards, and reduce their damage to humanity, infrastructure and the energy industry.” — Margaret Allen, SMU

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The Dallas Morning News: Earthquakes at DFW Airport continued for years after oil and gas wastewater well was shut

“Faults are not like a light switch – you don’t turn off a well and automatically stop triggering earthquakes.” — Heather DeShon, SMU seismologist.

Science journalist Anna Kuchment covered the earthquake research of a team of SMU seismologists led by SMU Associate Professor Heather DeShon and SMU Post-doctoral Researcher Paul Ogwari, who developed a unique method of data analysis that yielded the study results.

Kuchment wrote Earthquakes at DFW Airport continued for years after oil and gas wastewater well was shut for The Dallas Morning News.

The results of the analysis showed that efforts to stop human-caused earthquakes by shutting down wastewater injection wells that serve adjacent oil and gas fields may oversimplify the challenge. The seismologists analyzed a sequence of earthquakes at DFW Airport and found that even though wastewater injection was halted after a year, the earthquakes continued.

The sequence of quakes began in 2008, and wastewater injection was halted in 2009. But earthquakes continued for at least seven more years.

“This tells us that high-volume injection, even if it’s just for a short time, when it’s near a critically stressed fault, can induce long-lasting seismicity,” said Ogwari. The earthquakes may be continuing even now, he said.

The article by Kuchment, “Earthquakes at DFW Airport continued for years after oil and gas wastewater well was shut,” published Feb. 21, 2018.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Anna Kuchment
The Dallas Morning News
Earthquakes beneath DFW International Airport continued for seven years after an oil and gas company shut a nearby wastewater injection well that had been linked to the quakes, according to a new study by scientists at Southern Methodist University.

A wastewater well that continues to operate at the northern end of the airport – and which some area residents have said should be closed — was probably not involved in the events and poses little earthquake hazard, the researchers concluded.

“Faults are not like a light switch – you don’t turn off a well and automatically stop triggering earthquakes,” said Heather DeShon, a seismologist at Southern Methodist University and co-author of the paper, in an email.

The earthquakes at DFW Airport started on Halloween 2008, seven weeks after Chesapeake Energy began injecting wastewater into a well at the southern end of the airport. Scientists at SMU and the University of Texas at Austin investigated the quakes at the time and concluded they were most likely associated with the well.

Though Chesapeake shut its well in August 2009, earthquakes continued through at least the end of 2015. The largest, a 3.4-magnitude event, struck three years after the well was closed.

“It’s very surprising that one year of injection could produce earthquakes running for more than seven years,” said Paul Ogwari, the study’s lead author and a post-doctoral researcher at SMU. The paper was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

While earthquake magnitudes did not decline, Ogwari said, earthquake rates did: More than 80 percent of quakes in the sequence occurred during the first seven months of seismicity.

The DFW quakes are significant, because they mark the start of an unprecedented surge of earthquakes in North Texas and across the middle of the country.

Read the full story.

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SMU study finds earthquakes continue for years after gas field wastewater injection stops

High rates of injection and large volumes can perturb critically stressed faults, triggering earthquakes years after wastewater wells are shut in.

Efforts to stop human-caused earthquakes by shutting down wastewater injection wells that serve adjacent oil and gas fields may oversimplify the challenge, according to a new study from seismologists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The seismologists analyzed a sequence of earthquakes at DFW Airport and found that even though wastewater injection was halted after a year, the earthquakes continued.

The sequence of quakes began in 2008, and wastewater injection was halted in 2009. But earthquakes continued for at least seven more years.

“This tells us that high-volume injection, even if it’s just for a short time, when it’s near a critically stressed fault, can induce long-lasting seismicity,” said SMU seismologist Paul O. Ogwari, who developed a unique method of data analysis that yielded the study results.

The earthquakes may be continuing even now, said Ogwari, whose analysis extended through 2015.

The study’s findings indicate that shutting down injection wells in reaction to earthquakes, as some states such as Oklahoma and Arkansas are doing, may not have the desired effect of immediately stopping further earthquakes, said seismologist Heather DeShon, a co-author on the study and an associate professor in the SMU Earth Sciences Department.

“The DFW earthquake sequence began on Halloween in 2008 — before Oklahoma seismicity rates had notably increased,” said DeShon. “This study revisits what was technically the very first modern induced earthquake sequence in this region and shows that even though the wastewater injector in this case had been shut off very quickly, the injection activity still perturbed the fault, so that generated earthquakes even seven years later.”

That phenomenon is not unheard of. Seismologists saw that type of earthquake response from a rash of human-induced earthquakes in Colorado after wastewater injection during the 1960s at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver. Similarly in that case, injection was started and stopped, but earthquakes continued.

Such a possibility has not been well understood outside scientific circles, said DeShon. She is a member of the SMU seismology team that has studied and published extensively on their scientific findings related to the unusual spate of human-induced earthquakes in North Texas.

“The perception is that if the oil and gas wastewater injectors are leading to this, then you should just shut the injection wells down,” DeShon said. “But Paul’s study shows that there’s a lot to be learned about the physics of the process, and by monitoring continuously for years.”

Ogwari, DeShon and fellow SMU seismologist Matthew J. Hornbach reported the findings in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research in the article “The Dallas-Fort Worth Airport Earthquake Sequence: Seismicity Beyond Injection Period.”

Known DFW Airport quakes number more than 400
The DFW Airport’s unprecedented earthquake clusters were the first ever documented in the history of the North Texas region’s oil-rich geological system known as the Fort Worth Basin. The quakes are also the first of multiple sequences in the basin tied to large-scale subsurface disposal of waste fluids from oil and gas operations.

The DFW Airport earthquakes began in 2008, as did high-volume wastewater injection of brine. Most of the seismic activity occurred in the first two months after injection began, primarily within .62 miles, or 1 kilometer, from the well. Other clusters then migrated further to the northeast of the well over the next seven years. The quakes were triggered on a pre-existing regional fault that trends 3.7 miles, or 6 kilometers, northeast to southwest.

Ogwari, a post-doctoral researcher in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Earth Sciences Department in Dedman College, analyzed years of existing seismic data from the region to take a deeper look at the DFW Airport sequence, which totaled 412 earthquakes through 2015.

Looking at the data for those quakes, Ogwari discovered that they had continued for at least seven years into 2015 along 80% of the fault, even though injection was stopped after only 11 months in August of 2009.

Rate of quakes declined, but magnitude has never lessened
In another important finding from the study, Ogwari found that the magnitude of the DFW Airport earthquakes didn’t lessen over time, but instead held steady. Magnitude ranged from 0.5 to 3.4, with the largest one occurring three years after injection at the well was stopped.

“What we’ve seen here is that the magnitude is consistent over time within the fault,” Ogwari said. “We expect to see the bigger events during injection or immediately after injection, followed by abrupt decay. But instead we’re seeing the fault continue to produce earthquakes with similar magnitudes that we saw during injection.”

While the rate of earthquakes declined — there were 23 events a month from 2008 to 2009, but only 1 event a month after May 2010 — the magnitude stayed the same. That indicates the fault doesn’t heal completely.

“We don’t know why that is,” Ogwari said. “I think that’s a question that is out there and may need more research.”

More monitoring needed for human-induced quakes
Answering that question, and others, about the complex characteristics and behavior of faults and earthquakes, requires more extensive monitoring than is currently possible given the funding allotted to monitor quakes.

Monitoring the faults involves strategically placed stations that “listen” and record waves of intense energy echoing through the ground, DeShon said.

The Fort Worth Basin includes the Barnett shale, a major gas producing geological formation, atop the deep Ellenberger formation used for wastewater storage, which overlays a granite basement layer. The ancient Airport fault system extends through all units.

Friction prevented the fault from slipping for millions of years, but in 2008 high volumes of injected wastewater disturbed the Airport fault. That caused the fault to slip, releasing stored-up energy in waves. The most powerful waves were “felt” as the earth shaking.

“The detailed physical equations relating wastewater processes to fault processes is still a bit of a question,” DeShon said. “But generally the favored hypothesis is that the injected fluid changes the pressure enough to change the ratio of the downward stress to the horizontal stresses, which allows the fault to slip.”

Earthquakes in North Texas were unheard of until 2008, so when they began to be felt, seismologists scrambled to install monitors. When the quakes died down, the monitoring stations were removed.

“As it stands now, we miss the beginning of the quakes. The monitors are removed when the earthquakes stop being felt,” DeShon said. “But this study tells us that there’s more to it than the ‘felt’ earthquakes. We need to know how the sequences start, and also how they end. If we’re ever going to understand what’s happening, we need the beginning, the middle — and the end. Not just the middle, after they are felt.”

Innovative method tapped for studying earthquake activity
Monitors the SMU team installed at the DFW Airport were removed when seismic activity appeared to have died down in 2009.

Ogwari hypothesized he could look at historical data from distant monitoring stations still in place to extract information and document the history of the DFW Airport earthquakes.

The distant stations are a part of the U.S. permanent network monitored and maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey. The nearest one is 152 miles, 245 kilometers, away.

Earthquake waveforms, like human fingerprints, are unique. Ogwari used the local station monitoring data to train software to identify DFW earthquakes on the distant stations. Ogwari took each earthquake’s digital fingerprint and searched through years of data, cross-correlating waveforms from both the near and regional stations and identified the 412 DFW Airport events.

“The earthquakes are small, less than magnitude three,” DeShon said. “So on the really distant stations it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, sifting them from all the other tiny earthquakes happening all across the United States.”

Each path is unique for every earthquake, and seismologists record each wave’s movement up and down, north to south, and east to west. From that Ogwari analyzed the evolution of seismicity on the DFW airport fault over space and time. He was able to look at data from the distant monitors and find seismic activity at the airport as recent as 2015.

“Earthquakes occurring close in space usually have a higher degree of similarity,” Ogwari said. “As the separation distance increases the similarity decreases.”

To understand the stress on the fault, the researchers also modeled the location and timing of the pressure in the pores of the rock as the injected water infiltrated.

For the various earthquake clusters, the researchers found that pore pressure increased along the fault at varying rates, depending on how far the clusters were from the injection well, the rate and timing of injection, and hydraulic permeability of the fault.

The analysis showed pore-pressure changes to the fault from the injection well where the earthquakes started in 2008; at the location of the May 2010 quakes along the fault; and at the northern edge of the seismicity.

Will the DFW Airport fault continue to slip and trigger earthquakes?

“We don’t know,” Ogwari said. “We can’t tell how long it will continue. SMU and TexNet, the Texas Seismic Network, continue to monitor both the DFW Airport faults and other faults in the Basin.” — Margaret Allen, SMU

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Scientific American: Drilling Reawakens Sleeping Faults in Texas, Leads to Earthquakes

For 300 million years faults showed no activity, and then wastewater injections from oil and gas wells came along. Study authors took a different approach in the new work — they hunted for deformed faults below Texas.

Science journalist Anna Kuchment covered the landmark earthquake research of a team of SMU geophysicists led by SMU Associate Professor Beatrice Magnani in the SMU Department of Earth Sciences. Kuchment wrote Drilling Reawakens Sleeping Faults in Texas, Leads to Earthquakes for Scientific American.

The SMU researchers tapped seismic data to analyze earthquakes in Texas over the past decade.

The results of the analysis showed that human activity is causing the earthquakes as a result of movement in faults that have been silent for at least 300 million years, until recent injection of oil and gas wastewater.

The article by Kuchment, “Drilling Reawakens Sleeping Faults in Texas, Leads to Earthquakes,” published Nov. 24, 2017.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Anna Kuchment
Scientific American
Since 2008, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and a handful of other states have experienced unprecedented surges of earthquakes. Oklahoma’s rate increased from one or two per year to more than 800. Texas has seen a sixfold spike. Most have been small, but Oklahoma has seen several damaging quakes stronger than magnitude 5. While most scientists agree that the surge has been triggered by the injection of wastewater from oil and gas production into deep wells, some have suggested these quakes are natural, arising from faults in the crust that move on their own every so often. Now researchers have traced 450 million years of fault history in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and learned these faults almost never move. “There hasn’t been activity along these faults for 300 million years,” says Beatrice Magnani, a seismologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and lead author of a paper describing the research, published today in Science Advances. “Geologically, we usually define these faults as dead.”

Magnani and her colleagues argue that these faults would not have produced the recent earthquakes if not for wastewater injection. Pressure from these injections propagates underground and can disturb weak faults. The work is another piece of evidence implicating drilling in the quakes, yet the Texas government has not officially accepted the link to one of its most lucrative industries.

Magnani and her colleagues studied the Texas faults using images of the subsurface similar to ultrasound scans. Known as seismic reflection data, the images are created by equipment that generates sound waves and records the speeds at which the waves bounce off faults and different rock layers deep within the ground. Faults that have produced earthquakes look like vertical cracks in a brick wall, where one side of the wall has sunk down a few inches so the rows of bricks no longer line up. Scientists know the age of each rock layer—each row of bricks–based on previous studies that have used a variety of dating techniques.

Read the full story.

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SMU seismology research shows North Texas earthquakes occurring on “dead” faults

Study by Beatrice Magnani, USGS and other SMU scientists shows recent seismicity in Fort Worth Basin occurred on faults not active for 300 million years

Recent earthquakes in the Fort Worth Basin — in the rural community of Venus and the Dallas suburb of Irving – occurred on faults that had not been active for at least 300 million years, according to research led by SMU seismologist Beatrice Magnani.

The research supports the assertion that recent North Texas earthquakes were induced, rather than natural – a conclusion entirely independent of previous analyses correlating seismicity to the timing of wastewater injection practices, but that corroborates those earlier findings.

The full study, “Discriminating between natural vs induced seismicity from long-term deformation history of intraplate faults,” was published online Nov. 24, 2017 by the journal Science Advances.

“To our knowledge this is the first study to discriminate natural and induced seismicity using classical structural geology analysis techniques,” said Magnani, associate professor of geophysics in SMU’s Huffington Department of Earth Sciences. Co-authors for the study include Michael L. Blanpied, associate coordinator of the USGS Earthquake Hazard program, and SMU seismologists Heather DeShon and Matthew Hornbach.

The results were drawn from analyzing the history of fault slip (displacement) over the lifetime of the faults. The authors analyzed seismic reflection data, which allow “mapping” of the Earth’s subsurface from reflected, artificially generated seismic waves. Magnani’s team compared data from the North Texas area, where several swarms of felt earthquakes have been occurring since 2008, to data from the Midwestern U.S. region that experienced major earthquakes in 1811 and 1812 in the New Madrid seismic zone.

Frequent small earthquakes are still recorded in the New Madrid seismic zone, which is believed to hold the potential for larger earthquakes in the future.

“These North Texas faults are nothing like the ones in the New Madrid Zone – the faults in the Fort Worth Basin are dead,” Magnani said. “The most likely explanation for them to be active today is because they are being anthropogenically induced to move.”

In the New Madrid seismic zone, the team found that motion along the faults that are currently active has been occurring over many millions of years. This has resulted in fault displacements that grow with increasing age of sedimentary formations.

In the Fort Worth Basin, along faults that are currently seismically active, there is no evidence of prior motion over the past 300 million years.

“The study’s findings suggest that the recent Fort Worth Basin earthquakes, which involve swarms of activity on several faults in the region, have been induced by human activity,” said USGS scientist Blanpied.

The findings further suggest that these North Texas earthquakes are not simply happening somewhat sooner than they would have otherwise on faults continually active over long time periods. Instead, Blanpied said, the study indicates reactivation of long-dormant faults as a consequence of waste fluid injection.

Seismic reflection profiles in the Venus region used for this study were provided by the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program.

Seismic reflection profiles for the Irving area are proprietary. Magnani and another team of scientists collected seismic reflection data used for this research during a 2008-2011 project in the northern Mississippi embayment, home to the New Madrid seismic zone. — Kim Cobb, SMU

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Prehistoric puzzle settled: carbon dioxide link to global warming 22 million years ago

The modern link between high carbon dioxide levels and climate change didn’t appear to hold true for a time interval about 22 million years ago; but now a new study has found the link does indeed exist.

Fossil leaves from Africa have resolved a prehistoric climate puzzle — and also confirm the link between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming.

Research until now has produced a variety of results and conflicting data that have cast doubt on the link between high carbon dioxide levels and climate change for a time interval about 22 million years ago.

But a new study has found the link does indeed exist for that prehistoric time period, say researchers at Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

The finding will help scientists understand how recent and future increases in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide may impact the future of our planet, say the SMU researchers.

The discovery comes from new biochemical analyses of fossil leaves from plants that grew on Earth 27 million years ago and 22 million years ago, said geologist Tekie Tesfamichael, lead scientist on the research.

The new analyses confirm research about modern climate — that global temperatures rise and fall with increases and decreases in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere — but in this case even in prehistoric times, according to the SMU-led international research team.

Carbon dioxide is a gas that is normally present in the Earth’s atmosphere, even millions of years ago. It’s dubbed a greenhouse gas because greater concentrations cause the overall temperature of Earth’s atmosphere to rise, as happens in a greenhouse with lots of sunlight.

Recently greenhouse gas increases have caused global warming, which is melting glaciers, sparking extreme weather variability and causing sea levels to rise.

The new SMU discovery that carbon dioxide behaved in the same manner millions of years ago that it does today has significant implications for the future. The finding suggests the pairing of carbon dioxide and global warming that is seen today also holds true for the future if carbon dioxide levels continue to rise as they have been, said Tesfamichael.

“The more we understand about the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperature in the past, the more we can plan for changes ahead,” said Tesfamichael, an SMU postdoctoral fellow in Earth Sciences.

“Previous work reported a variety of results and conflicting data about carbon dioxide concentrations at the two intervals of time that we studied,” he said. “But tighter control on the age of our fossils helped us to address whether or not atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration corresponded to warming — which itself is independently well-documented in geochemical studies of marine fossils in ocean sediments.”

The researchers reported their findings in Geology, the scientific journal of the Geological Society of America. The article is “Settling the issue of ‘decoupling’ between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature: [CO2]atm reconstructions across the warming Paleogene-Neogene divide.”

Co-authors from the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College are professors Bonnie Jacobs, an expert in paleobotany and paleoclimate, and Neil J. Tabor, an expert in sedimentology and sedimentary geochemistry.

Other co-authors are Lauren Michel, Tennessee Technological University; Ellen Currano, University of Wyoming; Mulugeta Feseha, Addis Ababa University; Richard Barclay, Smithsonian Institution; John Kappelman, University of Texas; and Mark Schmitz, Boise State University.

Discovery of rare, well-preserved fossil leaves enables finding
The findings were possible thanks to the rare discovery of two sites with extraordinarily well-preserved fossil leaves of flowering plants from the Ethiopian Highlands of eastern Africa.

Such well-preserved fossil leaves are a rarity, Tesfamichael said.

“Finding two sites with great preservation in the same geographic region from two important time intervals was very fortunate, as this enabled us to address the question we had about the relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperatures,” he said.

Scientists know that variations in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide affect carbon fixation in leaves during photosynthesis. This causes leaves to develop anatomical and physiological changes such as the frequency and size of stomata — the pores on the surface of a leaf through which carbon passes.

Scientists can measure those attributes, among others, in fossil leaves, so that leaf fossils can be used as proxies for Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide history.

The sites producing the leaves for the SMU study were discovered separately in years past, but major fossil collections were produced through field work coordinated by the SMU research team and their co-authors, who have been collaborating on this project for several years.

The work has had funding from the National Science Foundation, The National Geographic Committee for Research and Exploration, the SMU Ford Fellowship Program, SMU Research Council, the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, and the Dallas Paleontological Society Frank Crane Scholarship.

The fossils are housed permanently in the collections at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. Institutional and governmental support came from the National Museum of Ethiopia, the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage, and Addis Ababa University.

Previous studies firmly established a temperature difference
One of the sites dates to the late Oligocene Epoch, and the other to the early Miocene.

Previous studies that measured ocean temperatures from around the world for the two intervals have firmly established a temperature difference on Earth between the two times, with one much warmer than the other. So the SMU study sought to measure the levels of carbon dioxide for the two time periods.

For the SMU analyses, fossil leaves of a single species were collected from the 27 million-year-old late Oligocene site. The leaves had been deposited during prehistoric times in the area of Chilga in northwest Ethiopia most likely at a river bank. The Earth’s climate during the late Oligocene may have been somewhat warmer than today, although glaciers were forming on Antarctica. The SMU study found carbon dioxide levels, on average, around 390 parts per million, about what it is on Earth today.

Fossil leaves of the 22 million-year-old species from the early Miocene were collected from ancient lake deposits, now a rock called shale, from the modern-day Mush Valley in central Ethiopia. The early Miocene climate at that time was warmer than the late Oligocene and likewise the SMU study found higher carbon dioxide levels. Atmospheric carbon dioxide was about 870 parts per million, double what it is on Earth today.

The SMU study confirmed a relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature during the late Oligocene and early Miocene.

Paleoclimate data can help predict our planet’s future climate
While carbon dioxide isn’t the only factor affecting Earth’s climate or global mean temperature, it is widely considered by scientists among the most significant. Much is known about climate change and global warming, but questions still remain.

“One of those is ‘What’s the sensitivity of the Earth’s temperature to carbon dioxide concentration? Is it very sensitive? Is it not so sensitive?’ Estimating temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations for times in the past can help find the answer to that question,” Jacobs said. “There’s a lot of work on paleoclimate in general, but not as much on the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature.”

The finding is an important one.

“The amount of temperature change during this interval is approximately within the range of the temperature change that is estimated from climate models for our next century given a doubling of carbon dioxide concentration since the industrial revolution,” Jacobs said.

With the new model reaffirming the prehistoric relationship, scientists can look now at related questions, said climate change scientist Lauren Michel, who worked on the study as a post-doctoral researcher at SMU.

“Answering questions about the rate of change and which factors changed first, for example, will ultimately give a clearer picture of the Earth’s climate change patterns,” Michel said. “I think it is valuable to understand the relationship of greenhouse gases and climate factors represented in the rock record so we can have a better idea of what we can expect in the future and how we can prepare for that.”

SMU study confirms relationship that previous methods overlooked
Previous studies found little to no correlation between temperature and carbon dioxide for the late Oligocene and early Miocene. That has puzzled paleoclimate researchers for at least a decade.

“We have a good test-case scenario with these well-preserved plants from both time slices, where we know one time slice, with higher levels of carbon dioxide, was a warmer climate globally than the other,” Tesfamichael said.

“It’s been a puzzle as to why the previous methods found no relationship, or an inverse correlation,” he said. “We think it’s for lack of the well-dated proxy — such as our fossil leaves from two precise times in the same region — which deliver a reliable answer. Or, perhaps the models themselves needed improvement.”

Previous studies used methodologies that differed from the SMU study, although all methods (proxies) incorporate some aspects of what is known about living organisms and how they interact with atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Some studies rely on biochemical modeling of the relationship between single-celled marine fossils and atmospheric carbon dioxide, and others rely on the relationship between stomata and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration observed in the living relatives of particular fossil plant species.

“Each method has its assumptions,” said Tesfamichael. “We will see if our results hold up with further studies of this time interval using the same methodology we used.” — Margaret Allen, SMU

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Australian Geographic: Secrets of leaf size revealed

New findings reveal the real reasons behind varying leaf sizes.

Australian Geographic has covered the research of SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs, a professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

Working with a global team of researchers, Jacobs and her colleagues cracked the mystery of leaf size. The research was published Sept. 1, 2017 as a cover story in Science.

The researchers from Australia, the U.K., Canada, Argentina, the United States, Estonia, Spain and China analyzed leaves from more than 7,600 species of plants over the past 20 years, then pooled and analyzed the data with new theory to create a series of equations that can predict the maximum viable leaf size anywhere in the world based on the risk of daytime overheating and night-time freezing.

The researchers will use these findings to create more accurate vegetation models. This will be used by governments to predict how vegetation will change locally and globally under climate change, and to plan for adaptation.

Jacobs contributed an extensive leaf database — research that was funded by a National Science Foundation grant. She analyzed the leaf characteristics of 880 species of modern tropical African plants, which occurred in various combinations among 30 plant communities. Jacobs measured leaves of the plant specimens at the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium, one of the largest archives of pressed dried plant specimens from around the world.

Jacobs is one of a handful of the world’s experts on the fossil plants of ancient Africa. As part of a team of paleontologists working there, she hunts plant and animal fossils in Ethiopia’s prolific Mush Valley, as well as elsewhere in Africa.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Karl Gruber
Australian Geographic
You may have learnt at school that leaf size depends on water availability and that they are meant to help plants avoid overheating. But a new study that looked at leaf sizes around the world found that, rather than water availability, it all boils down to temperature, both high and low.

Leaf sizes can vary by as much as 100,000 fold, with some leaves having an area of just 1 mm2 while other can have an area of up to 1 m2. But what is driving these big differences?

“The conventional explanation was that water availability and overheating were the two major limits to leaf size. But the data didn’t fit,” says Ian. “For example the tropics are both wet and hot, and leaves in cooler parts of the world are unlikely to overheat,” explained Ian Wright, from Macquarie University, who led the new study.

A key finding from the study is that for plants all around the world the main factors limiting leaf size are the risk of frosting in cold nights, which can damage leaves, and the risk of overheating during the day.

“Latitude explains 28% of variation leaf size, globally. Warm wet regions are characterised by large-leaved species, warm dry regions and cold regions by smaller-leaved species. These patterns can all be understood in relation to the energy inputs and outputs to leaves, but only if you consider both the daytime (overheating) and night-time (freezing) risks,” Wright says.

Read the full story.

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BBC: Clues to why leaves come in many sizes

The huge variety of leaves in the plant kingdom has long been a source of wonder and fascination.

BBC News has covered the research of SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs, a professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

Working with a global team of researchers, Jacobs and her colleagues cracked the mystery of leaf size. The research was published Sept. 1, 2017 as a cover story in Science.

The researchers from Australia, the U.K., Canada, Argentina, the United States, Estonia, Spain and China analyzed leaves from more than 7,600 species of plants over the past 20 years, then pooled and analyzed the data with new theory to create a series of equations that can predict the maximum viable leaf size anywhere in the world based on the risk of daytime overheating and night-time freezing.

The researchers will use these findings to create more accurate vegetation models. This will be used by governments to predict how vegetation will change locally and globally under climate change, and to plan for adaptation.

Jacobs contributed an extensive leaf database — research that was funded by a National Science Foundation grant. She analyzed the leaf characteristics of 880 species of modern tropical African plants, which occurred in various combinations among 30 plant communities. Jacobs measured leaves of the plant specimens at the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium, one of the largest archives of pressed dried plant specimens from around the world.

Jacobs is one of a handful of the world’s experts on the fossil plants of ancient Africa. As part of a team of paleontologists working there, she hunts plant and animal fossils in Ethiopia’s prolific Mush Valley, as well as elsewhere in Africa.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Helen Briggs
BBC News
The leaves of a banana plant, for instance, are about a million times bigger than the leaves of heather.

The conventional wisdom is that leaf size is limited by the balance between how much water is available to a plant and the risk of overheating.

However, a study of more than 7,000 plant species around the world suggests the answer may be more complex.

“A banana leaf is able to be so huge because bananas naturally grow in places that are very hot and very wet,” said Ian Wright of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
“Our work shows that in fact that if there’s enough water in the soil then there’s almost no limit to how large leaves can be.”

He says this is only part of the puzzle of leaf size.

“The other part is about the tendency for larger leaves to freeze at night,” Dr Wright explained.

“And, you put these two ingredients together — the risk of freezing and the risk of overheating — and this helps understand the pattern of leaf sizes you see across the entire world.”

There are hundreds of thousands of plant species on the planet, from tiny alpine plants to massive jungle palms.

Their leaves vary in area from less than 1 square millimetre to greater than 1 square metre.

Large-leaved plants predominate in tropical jungle — something that was noted as early as the 19th Century. Meanwhile, small-leaved plants thrive in arid deserts and at high latitudes.

Some decades ago, scientists realised that variability in leaf size was related to water and temperature. They proposed that the limit to leaf size was set by the risk of overheating.

Thus, when rainfall is high, plants can get away with having larger leaves.
The new research, published in the journal Science, suggests this idea applies only in certain regions of the globe.

“There were some pieces in this puzzle that were clearly missing,” Dr. Wright told BBC News.

Read the full story.

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The mystery of leaf size solved by global team of scientists

A global team of researchers, including SMU paleobotanist Bonnie Jacobs, have cracked the mystery of leaf size. The research was published Sept. 1, 2017 as a cover story in Science.

SMU paleobotanist Bonnie F. Jacobs has contributed research to a major new study that provides scientists with a new tool for understanding both ancient and future climate by looking at the size of plant leaves.

Why is a banana leaf a million times bigger than a common heather leaf? Why are leaves generally much larger in tropical jungles than in temperate forests and deserts? The textbooks say it’s a balance between water availability and overheating.

But it’s not that simple, the researchers found.

The study, published in the Sept. 1, 2017 issue of Science, was led by Associate Professor Ian Wright from Macquarie University, Australia. The study’s findings reveal that in much of the world the key factor limiting the size of a plant’s leaves is the temperature at night and the risk of frost damage to leaves.

Jacobs said the implications of the study are significant for enabling scientists to either predict modern leaf size in the distant future, or to understand the climate for a locality as it may have been in the past.

“This research provides scientists with another tool for predicting future changes in vegetation, given climate change, and for describing ancient climate given fossil leaves,” said Jacobs, a professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

“Now we can reliably use this as another way to look at future climate models for a specific location and predict the size of plant leaves,” she said. “Or, if we’re trying to understand what the climate was for a prehistoric site tens of millions of years ago, we can look at the plant fossils discovered in that location and describe what the climate most likely was at that time.”

Wright, Jacobs and 15 colleagues from Australia, the U.K., Canada, Argentina, the United States, Estonia, Spain and China analyzed leaves from more than 7,600 species, then pooled and analyzed the data with new theory to create a series of equations that can predict the maximum viable leaf size anywhere in the world based on the risk of daytime overheating and night-time freezing.

The researchers will use these findings to create more accurate vegetation models. This will be used by governments to predict how vegetation will change locally and globally under climate change, and to plan for adaptation.

Big data solves century-old conundrum
The iconic paintings of Henri Rousseau illustrate that when we think of steamy tropics we expect large leaves. But for scientists it’s been a century-old conundrum: why does leaf size vary with latitude – from very small near the poles to massive leaves in the tropics?

“The conventional explanation was that water availability and overheating were the two major limits to leaf size. But the data didn’t fit,” says Wright. “For example the tropics are both wet and hot, and leaves in cooler parts of the world are unlikely to overheat.”

“Our team worked both ends of the problem – observation and theory,” he says. “We used big data – measurements made on tens of thousands of leaves. By sampling across all continents, climate zones and plant types we were able to show that simple ‘rules’ seemingly operate across the world’s plant species, rules that were not apparent from previous, more limited analyses.”

Jacobs contributed an extensive leaf database she compiled about 20 years ago, funded by a National Science Foundation grant. She analyzed the leaf characteristics of 880 species of modern tropical African plants, which occurred in various combinations among 30 plant communities. Jacobs measured leaves of the plant specimens at the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium, one of the largest archives of pressed dried plant specimens from around the world.

She looked at all aspects of leaf shape and climate, ranging from seasonal and annual rainfall and temperature for each locale, as well as leaf shape, size, tip, base, among others. Using statistical analyses to plot the variables, she found the most prominent relationship between leaf shape and climate was that size increases with rainfall amount. Wet sites had species with larger leaves than dry sites.

Her Africa database was added to those of many other scientists who have compiled similar data for other localities around the world.

Threat of night time frost damage determines the size of a leaf
“Using our knowledge of plant function and biophysics we developed a fresh take on ‘leaf energy balance’ theory, and compared our predictions to observed leaf sizes,” Wright says.

“The most surprising result was that over much of the world the maximum size of leaves is set not by the risk of overheating, but rather by the risk of damaging frost at night. Larger leaves have thicker, insulating ‘boundary layers’ of still air that slows their ability to draw heat from their surroundings – heat that is needed to compensate for longwave energy lost to the night-time sky,” says co-author Colin Prentice from Imperial College London, who co-ordinated the mathematical modelling effort.

“International collaborations are making ecology into a predictive science at global scale,” says Emeritus Professor Mark Westoby. “At Macquarie University we’re proud to have led this networking over the past 20 years.” — Margaret Allen, SMU, and Macquarie University

By Ian Wright
Macquarie University
As a plant ecologist, I try to understand variation in plant traits (the physical, chemical and physiological properties of their tissues) and how this variation affects plant function in different ecosystems.

For this study I worked with 16 colleagues from Australia, the UK, Canada, Argentina, the US, Estonia, Spain and China to analyse leaves from more than 7,600 species. We then teamed the data with new theory to create a model that can predict the maximum viable leaf size anywhere in the world, based on the dual risks of daytime overheating and night-time freezing.

These findings will be used to improve global vegetation models, which are used to predict how vegetation will change under climate change, and also to better understand past climates from leaf fossils.

From giants to dwarfs
The world’s plant species vary enormously in the typical size of their leaves; from 1 square millimetre in desert species such as common eutaxia (Eutaxia microphylla), or in common heather (Calluna vulgaris) in Europe, to as much as 1 square metre in tropical species like Musa textilis, the Filipino banana tree.

But what is the physiological or ecological significance of all this variation in leaf size? How does it affect the way that plants “do business”, using leaves as protein-rich factories that trade water (transpiration) for carbon (photosynthesis), powered by energy from the sun?

More than a century ago, early plant ecologists such as Eugenius Warming argued that it was the high rainfall in the tropics that allowed large-leaved species to flourish there.

In the 1960s and ‘70s physicists and physiologists tackled the problem, showing that in mid-summer large leaves are more prone to overheating, requiring higher rates of “transpirational cooling” (a process akin to sweating) to avoid damage. This explained why many desert species have small leaves, and why species growing in cool, shaded understoreys (below the tree canopy) can have large leaves.

But still there were missing pieces to this puzzle. For example, the tropics are both wet and hot, and these theories predicted disadvantages for large-leafed species in hot regions. And, in any case, overheating must surely be unlikely for leaves in many cooler parts of the world.

Our research aimed to find these missing pieces. By collecting samples from all continents, climate zones and plant types, our team found simple “rules” that appear to apply to all of the world’s plant species – rules that were not apparent from previous, more limited analyses.

We found the key factors are day and night temperatures, rainfall and solar radiation (largely determined by distance from the Equator and the amount of cloud cover). The interaction of these factors means that in hot and sunny regions that are also very dry, most species have small leaves, but in hot or sunny regions that receive high rainfall, many species have large leaves. Finally, in very cold regions (e.g. at high elevation, or at high northern latitudes), most species have small leaves.

But the most surprising results emerged from teaming the new theory for leaf size, leaf temperature and water use with the global data analyses, to investigate what sets the maximum size of leaves possible at any point on the globe.

Read the author’s full essay

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Class of 2017: SMU professor named outstanding teacher by UT Regents

The jaw of a 20 million-year-old cane rat was discovered by scientists at a hominoid locality in northern Uganda. The specimen is at the Uganda National Museum, Kampala.

Alisa Winkler is an SMU adjunct faculty member and research assistant professor of paleontology in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The University of Texas System has recognized SMU Research Assistant Professor Alisa J. Winkler for extraordinary classroom performance and innovation in undergraduate instruction.

Winkler, who is an SMU adjunct faculty member in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, was named to the Class of 2017 for the Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Awards of The University of Texas. It is the Board of Regents’ highest honor. It recognizes faculty for the highest quality of instruction in the classroom, laboratory, field and online.

Winkler earned her Ph.D. in geology from SMU in 1990, specializing in mammalian vertebrate paleontology.

“To be honest, when I was young I never thought about being a teacher. Later in life it just came with the territory of being in academia,” Winkler said. “What I discovered as a teacher, however, is how much I enjoy, learn from, and am inspired by my students. Their passion for knowledge is both a challenge and a stimulus for me to continue learning myself.”

She is an associate professor at U.T. Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Cell Biology, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

In addition to her teaching commitments and some contributions to the higher education literature, Winkler maintains an active research program in vertebrate paleontology as a research professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

In recent work, she analyzed research literature for “Fossil Rodents of Africa,” the first comprehensive summary and distribution analysis of Africa’s fossil rodents since 1978, according to SMU professor of geological sciences and vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs, a world-renowned dinosaur expert and president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

“Alisa has been recognized for her teaching skills at U.T. Southwestern, but she is also globally recognized for her research on East African fossil mammals, which constrains the age and paleo-environments of human evolution,” Jacobs said. “Working from her research office in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, and in the field in Kenya and Uganda, she is a great asset to our students and adds depth to our program.”

Winkler received a B.A. in Biology from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville in 1978. She then earned an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1982.

She has been teaching anatomy at U.T. Southwestern since 1990. Winkler is currently co-director of the Human Structure course (anatomy, embryology and radiology) for first year medical students, and director of the Anatomy course for health professions students. Both courses focus on a cadaver-based dissection laboratory, and require extensive administrative, organizational and teaching commitments.

Winkler is the recipient of numerous teaching awards from the medical students, including seven pre-clinical teaching awards and a Katherine Howe Muntz Award for Teaching in Anatomy (2010). The Human Structure course was awarded the best course award for first year courses in 2016. She was awarded an outstanding educator award in health care sciences from the health professions students in 2014.

The Regent’s Outstanding Teacher Award was established in 2008 and is offered annually in recognition of faculty members at the The University of Texas System’s eight academic and six health institutions. With a monetary award of $25,000, the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards are among the largest and most competitive in the nation for rewarding outstanding faculty performance.

Faculty members undergo a series of rigorous evaluations by students, peer faculty and external reviewers. The review panels consider a range of activities and criteria in their evaluations of a candidate’s teaching performance, including classroom expertise, curricula quality, innovative course development and student learning outcomes.

Winkler is one of 56 faculty members from across U.T.’s 14 academic and health institutions honored with the award by the Regents Aug. 23 in Austin. — SMU, U.T. System

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LiveScience: Newfound dino looks like creepy love child of a turkey and ostrich

A new giant bird-like dinosaur discovered in China has been named for SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Corythoraptor jacobsi, by the scientists who identified the new oviraptorid. (Credit: Zhao Chuang)

A new giant bird-like dinosaur discovered in China has been named for SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, Corythoraptor jacobsi, by the scientists who identified the new oviraptorid.

Live Science Senior Writer Laura Geggel covered the discovery of a new Cretaceous Period dinosaur from China that is named for paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, an SMU professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

Jacobs mentored three of the authors on the article. First author on the paper was Junchang Lü, an SMU Ph.D. alum, with co-authors Yuong–Nam Lee and Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, both SMU Ph.D. alums.

The Live Science article, Newfound dino looks like creepy love child of a turkey and ostrich, published July 27, 2017. The dinosaur’s name, Corythoraptor jacobsi, translates to Jacobs’ helmeted thief.

The scientific article “High diversity of the Ganzhou Oviraptorid Fauna increased by a new “cassowary-like” crested species” was published July 27, 2017 in Nature’s online open access mega-journal of primary research Scientific Reports.

Jacobs in 2016 co-authored an analysis of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

He is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

A world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, Jacobs in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education. He joined SMU’s faculty in 1983.

Jacobs is the author of “Quest for the African Dinosaurs: Ancient Roots of the Modern World” (Villard Books and Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000); “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (Texas A&M U. Press, 1999), which is the basis of a Texas dinosaur exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; “Cretaceous Airport” (ISEM, 1993); and more than 100 scientific papers and edited volumes.

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EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
The newly identified oviraptorid dinosaur Corythoraptor jacobsi has a cassowary-like head crest, known as a casque.

A Chinese farmer has discovered the remains of a dinosaur that could have passed for the ostrich-like cassowary in its day, sporting the flightless bird’s head crest and long thunder thighs, indicating it could run quickly, just like its modern-day lookalike, a new study finds.

The newfound dinosaur’s 6-inch-tall (15 centimeters) head crest is uncannily similar to the cassowary’s headpiece, known as a casque, the researchers said. In fact, the crests have such similar shapes, the cassowary’s may provide clues about how the dinosaur used its crest more than 66 million years ago, they said.

The findings suggest that the dinosaur, which would have towered at 5.5 feet (1.6 meters), may have had a similar lifestyle to the modern cassowary bird (Casuarius unappendiculatus), which is native to Australia and New Guinea, the study’s lead researcher, Junchang Lü, a professor at the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, told Live Science in an email.

Researchers found the oviraptorid — a type of giant, bird-like dinosaur — in Ganzhou, a city in southern China, in 2013. The specimen was in remarkable shape: The paleontologists found an almost complete skeleton, including the skull and lower jaw, which helped them estimate that the creature was likely a young adult, or at least 8 years of age, when it died.

The long-necked and crested dinosaur lived from about 100 million to 66 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, and likely used its clawed hands to hunt lizards and other small dinosaurs, Lü added.

The research team named the unique beast Corythoraptor jacobsi. Its genus name refers to the raptor’s cassowary-like crest, and the species name honors Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University who mentored three of the study’s researchers.

The researchers think the crest likely served the dinosaur in different ways, they said, including in display, communication and perhaps even as an indication of the dinosaur’s fitness during the mating season.

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Dallas Innovates: SMU Researchers Find West Virginia Geothermal Spots

The heated energy sources were discovered in the Mountain State by examining previously overlooked oil and gas data.

Reporter Amy Wolff Sorter with Dallas Innovates reported on the research of the SMU Geothermal Lab, which has identified in West Virginia what may be the largest geothermal hot spot in the United States.

The Dallas Innovates article, “SMU Researchers Find West Virginia Geothermal Spots,” published May 26, 2017.

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EXCERPT:

By Amy Wolff Sorter
Dallas Innovates
The state of West Virginia has been home to coal-driven energy for nearly two centuries. Now, there could be another energy source directly under the Mountain State’s surface discovered by researchers at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

The researchers, examining previously overlooked oil and gas data, located several hot patches of earth, some as hot as 392 degrees Fahrenheit. These hot patches are situated roughly three miles under the state’s surface. In fact, scientists believe West Virginia could be sitting on the largest geothermal hot spot in the United States.

Geothermal patches overlooked in data
SMU’s Geothermal Lab Coordinator Maria Richards told the Exponent Telegram in Clarksburg, West Virginia that the hot patches were discovered by studying previously overlooked oil and gas data.

“We were aware that there were hot springs along the faults in West Virginia, and there was a basic understanding that there could be some sort of higher elevated areas, but we had never had the resources to be able to go back out and look at the deeper data until we had this project from Google that allowed us to bring in the oil and gas data,” she said.

The hot-water reservoirs were once considered too deep for inexpensive production.

However, “because of oil and gas drilling and some of the newer technologies in terms of drilling and pumping, some new innovative ways of developing systems, we can now go into places where we can inject water or a fluid that will then bring out that heat,” Richards said.

Geothermal’s appeal is that it is emission-free. It also has a smaller footprint, as energy is generated from underground wells.

Additionally, this particular renewable energy can overlap with other forms of energy, such as coal.

SMU’s Richards said that hot fluid can be used to dry coal, which, in turn, helps it burn more efficiently. The cleaner the coal burns, the less coal is required to produce electricity.

“Rather than having to burn a fossil fuel to generate electricity to create heat, the goal is to use the heat from the earth to create that heat automatically without having to generate electricity,” Richards said.

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Nat’l Geographic: One of Earth’s most dangerous supervolcanoes is rumbling

Italy’s Campi Flegrei may be awakening from a long slumber, scientists warn.

Vulcanologist James E. Quick, SMU’s associate vice president for research and dean of Graduate Studies, is quoted for his expertise in the magazine National Geographic.

Quick, a geologist in the Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, is quoted in “One of Earth’s most dangerous supervolcanoes is rumbling.” The article was published Dec. 23, 2016.

An expert in volcano hazards, Quick is an expert in geologic science and volcano risk assessment, particularly the study of magmatic systems. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 2009 Quick led the international scientific team that discovered a 280-million-year-old fossil supervolcano in the Italian Alps. The supervolcano’s magmatic plumbing system is exposed to an unprecedented depth of 25 kilometers, giving scientists new understanding into the phenomenon of explosive supervolcanos.

Italian geologists in 2010 awarded Quick the Capellini Medal to recognize the discovery. In 2013 an area encompassing the supervolcano won designation as the Sesia-Val Grande Geopark by the UNESCO Global Network of National Geoparks.

Prior to SMU, Quick served a distinguished 25-year scientific career with the USGS, including as program coordinator for the Volcano Hazards Program.

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EXCERPT:

By Brian Clark Howard
National Geographic
A long-quiet yet huge supervolcano that lies under 500,000 people in Italy may be waking up and approaching a “critical state,” scientists report this week in the journal Nature Communications.

Based on physical measurements and computer modeling, “we propose that magma could be approaching the CDP [critical degassing pressure] at Campi Flegrei, a volcano in the metropolitan area of Naples, one of the most densely inhabited areas in the world, and where accelerating deformation and heating are currently being observed,” wrote the scientists—who are led by Giovanni Chiodini of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome.

A sudden release of hot magmatic gasses is possible in the near future, which could trigger a large eruption, the scientists warn. Yet the timing of any possible eruption is unknown and is currently not possible to predict….

The scars of another supervolcano were recently found in the Sesia Valley in the Italian Alps. That eight-mile-wide caldera likely last erupted 280 million years ago, when it blasted out a thousand times more material than Mount St. Helens spewed during its infamous 1980 eruption. The result was the blocking out of the sun, which led to global cooling.

“There will be another supervolcano explosion,” scientist James Quick, a geologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas, said in a statement when that volcano was found.
“We don’t know where, [but] Sesia Valley could help us to predict the next event.”

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LiveScience: Tough Turtle — Dino-Killing Asteroid Spared Sea Creature

“If these sea turtles do, in fact, form a tightly knit group, evolutionarily speaking, the [African] specimen provides proof that members of that group survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.” — Timothy Myers, SMU

Live Science Senior Writer Laura Geggel covered the research of paleontologist Timothy Scott Myers, a postdoctoral researcher in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

Myers analyzed an ancient sea turtle, discovered in Angola in 2012, with a triangular-shaped head that lived about 64 million years ago and that is closely related to earlier sea turtles that lived before scientists think an asteroid smashed into the earth sparking a massive mass extinction event.

The article “Tough Turtle: Dino-Killing Asteroid Spared Sea Creature,” cites new findings from Myers’ research, which studied the specimen. It was found along sea cliffs near the town of Landana, in the Angolan province of Cabinda in June 2012.

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EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
Shortly after an asteroid smashed into Earth about 65.5 million years ago, obliterating much of life on Earth,an ancient sea turtle with a triangular-shaped head swam along the relatively arid shores of southern Africa, a new study finds.

The creature, a newly identified species, lived about 64 million years ago during the Paleocene, an epoch within the Paleogene period, the researchers said. The animal is closely related to earlier sea turtles that lived before the asteroid struck, an event known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, which marks the mass extinction that killed about 75 percent of all species on Earth, including the nonavian dinosaurs.

“If these sea turtles do, in fact, form a tightly knit group, evolutionarily speaking, then the [African] specimen provides proof that members of that group survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous,” study lead researcher Timothy Myers, a research assistant professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told Live Science in an email.

Paleontologists found the specimen along the sea cliffs near the town of Landana, in the Angolan province of Cabinda in June 2012. Study senior researcher Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University, noticed part of the bone protruding from the rock. He and his team soon realized it was a nearly complete turtle skull and most of a hyoid, a U-shaped neck bone that supports the tongue.

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D Magazine: The Trinity Project — More About Bones

Answers to these questions can be supplied in part because there’s a fossil record, thanks to the efforts of Winkler, Slaughter, and Ellis W. Shuler, the person for whom the museum is named.

Journalist Laray Polk wrote about the Shuler Museum of Paleontology at SMU in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences as part of an essay on The Trinity Project and prehistoric bones native to the Dallas area.

The article, “The Trinity Project: More About Bones,” published Oct. 11, 2016.

Dale Winkler, director of the museum, showed Polk around the museum’s collections relevant to the article.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laray Polk
D Magazine
In addition to Pioneer Cemetery, there’s another quiet space in Dallas that holds the bones of ancestors: the Shuler Museum of Paleontology, located on the SMU campus. The Shuler Museum has no fully assembled skeletons of prehistoric carnivores on premises or other dazzling displays (though the day I visited, there was a stack of giant turtle shells in plaster jackets in the hallway, outside the entrance). For one, the museum is a shoebox of a space located on the basement floor of the Earth Sciences building. There isn’t the room for that sort of thing. Second, the fossils here function as teaching and research collections. A casual visit from a non-expert like me requires an appointment and a great amount of patience from the host, which I received in abundance from vertebrate paleontologist and museum director Dale A. Winkler.

The museum is arranged library-style with mastodon tusks and similar large bones laid out neatly on gray industrial shelving, while smaller specimens — teeth, small bone, shell, scute, and more — are held in cabinets with pullout trays lined in soft material and organized by collection. The occasion for my visit was to view those specimens described by Bob H. Slaughter and others in the 1962 report “The Hill-Shuler Local Faunas of the Upper Trinity River, Dallas and Denton Counties, Texas.”

My questions, then as now, are basic: what kinds of animal roamed the area now known as the Great Trinity Forest? What kinds of plants and trees were present? What was the climate like? How was the Trinity River floodplain formed?

Answers to these questions can be supplied in part because there’s a fossil record, thanks to the efforts of Winkler, Slaughter, and Ellis W. Shuler, the person for whom the museum is named. Shuler was hired by SMU in 1915, the year it opened, to teach geology and related courses. He served as head of the Geology Department and Dean of Graduate Studies until his retirement, in 1953.

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Laser Beats Rock: Armored Dinosaur May Have Relied Most on Sense of Smell

CT scans offer new insight into the little-understood Pawpawsaurus: One clue that led the researchers to determine that the sense of smell was Pawpawsaurus’s strongest sense was the large olfactory ratio.

Independent science journalist Sarah Puschmann covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in a post on her blog “Armored Dinosaur May Have Relied Most on Sense of Smell.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native from what is now Tarrant County, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

The Laser Beats Rock article published July 25, 2016.

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs, a world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, joined SMU’s faculty in 1983 and in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Sarah Puschmann
Laser Beats Rock
In 1819, the German naturalist Lorenz Oken found something astonishing inside a pterodactyl’s broken skull: petrified mud in the form of the long deceased dinosaur’s brain, so well molded into the crevices as to reveal the brain’s two distinct halves.

This so-called “fossil brain” is one of the first known instances of a cranial endocast, an internal cast of the skull that makes the impressions of the decayed soft tissue visible. For paleoneurologists not lucky enough to uncover a natural endocast, some have opted to slice open skulls and made molds using liquid latex rubber or plaster of Paris.

But cutting open a skull for study isn’t always an option, particularly if it is a holotype, the singular specimen used to define a species for the first time. This is the case for the 100 million year old skull from a dinosaur called Pawpawsaurus campbelli studied by Ariana Paulina-Carabajal of the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) and the Institute of Investigations in Biodiversity and the Environment (INIBIOMA) and her team, led by Louis Jacobs.

By CT scanning the skull, it was possible to make important insights about the dinosaur’s olfaction and hearing while leaving the precious holotype intact. Their analysis led the researchers to conclude that smell was the sense Pawpawsaurus most likely relied on most, as reported in the journal PLOS ONE.

This is valuable information, especially because so little is known about this dinosaur. What is known is that the four-legged herbivore most likely had long spines on its shoulders and neck, as was the case for other members of the same family of nodosaurids. It also probable that Pawpawsaurus wasn’t endowed with the knob of bone in its tail characteristic of ankylosaurids, a related dinosaur family, nor did it experience the satisfaction of slamming a club tail against, well, anything. (Was there such a thing as tail envy?)

Read the full story.

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The Texas Tribune: Sinkhole Warnings Don’t Faze West Texas

If the hole dramatically expands, “Wink will have some beachfront property,” Keely jokes. “Somebody’s going to make a marina out of it.” — Winkler County Sheriff George Keely to The Texas Tribune.

Wink sinkholes

The Texas Tribune journalist Jim Malewitz covered the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. Malewitz’s article, “Sinkhole Warnings Don’t Faze West Texas,” published July 12, 2016.

The Dedman College geophysicists are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images to reveal ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. They found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

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Zhong LU, SMU, Wink SinkholesTo request an interview with Zhong Lu call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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Jinwoo Kim, SMU, Wink sinkholes, InSARTo request an interview with Jin-woo Kim call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Jim Malewitz
The Texas Tribune
WINK — Sheriff George Keely’s truck bobbed as he cruised down a particularly warped and cracked stretch of county road.

“This is the road I don’t like to drive on if I don’t have to,” he said as brown-green West Texas scrubland reflected in the rearview mirror. The trip is riskier than he’d like.

But here was Keely — a few months away from retirement after more than 20 years as a Winkler County lawman, five of them as sheriff — again escorting a reporter and photographer across the unstable terrain toward the Wink Sinks, the community’s chasms of fascination and fear.

The two gaping sinkholes, which sit between the small towns of Wink and Kermit atop the largely tapped out Hendrick oilfield, aren’t new. Wink Sink No. 1 — more than a football field across and 100 feet deep when it collapsed — turned 36 years old last month. Its more massive cousin to the south, Wink Sink No.2, swallowed a water well, pipelines and surrounding desert back in 2002.

A recent study by two Southern Methodist University geophysicists has thrust the sinkholes back into conversations here and across the wider realm of social media.

The research, published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Remote Sensing, used satellite imagery to chart what other researchers and folks like Keely have noticed: the sinkholes keep growing, and land surrounding them is sinking — likely due to a mix of geology and human intervention.

The instability raises the possibility that more abysses could open without further notice, the SMU researchers suggested.

“A collapse could be catastrophic,” research scientist Jin-Woo Kim said in a statement upon the study’s release.

“I would be very concerned,” his partner Zhong Lu, a professor, said in an interview.

Those findings quickly garnered attention from news media across Texas and the U.S. and other websites. The headlines grew more alarming and less accurate as blogs and other websites aggregated and re-aggregated the news. (“Giant Sinkholes Threaten to Swallow Two Tiny West Texas Towns,” “Sinkholes May Take Texas Down”).

In Winkler County, the prognostications were greeted largely with a yawn.

Read the full story.

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KERA News: Near Wink, Texas, The Sink Holes Are Getting Bigger And Bigger

“’We could have another sink hole or two or 10 someday show up,’” (Winkler County Sheriff George) Keely says. In fact, the SMU researchers used satellite imaging to show the problem is getting worse.”

KERA public radio news covered the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.

KERA’s article, “Near Wink, Texas, The Sink Holes Are Getting Bigger And Bigger,” aired June 28, 2016.

The Dedman College faculty are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images to reveal ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. They found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye.

Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

KERA Public Radio News
The earth is crumbling in West Texas. Scientists from Southern Methodist University have new research that shows two massive sinkholes between the towns of Wink and Kermit are expanding.

Years of drilling for oil and gas have helped wash away salt beds underneath the ground. A shifting water table has made the problem worse and in some places the ground is sinking five inches a year, according to the satellite readings.

Now there’s concern the pits could converge into one giant hole. “A collapse could be catastrophic,” SMU research scientist Jin-Woo Kim said.

These wounds in the West Texas desert have been around for years. The first hole opened up near an abandoned oil well on June 3, 1980. Twenty-two years later, about a mile away, the second one appeared. From the sky, they look like high-caliber bullet holes

“It’s pretty scary. It’s just a big huge pit,” said Winkler County Sheriff George Keely, who has peered over the edge many times in his career. “It’s like standing on the moon looking into a crater. And you can see where it’s just caved off. It’s broken off over the years more and more. When you look down there, you’re looking at water.”

Water is the problem. West Texas, not far from Odessa, is oil country. Drillers started working near

Wink in the mid-1920s. For decades, they injected water into the ground and destabilized the earth, according to the researchers. Meanwhile, as the water table shrinks, thick layers of salt are dissolved far below the surface.

It’s like kicking the legs out from underneath a chair.

Read the full story.

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KERA: Thanks To CT Scans, Scientists Know A Lot About Texas’ Pawpawsaurus Dinosaur

“There’s no relationship between dinosaurs and armadillos, which are mammals, but it is interesting that something that looked like an armadillo was here in Texas 100 million years before highways.” — Jacobs

KERA public radio journalist Justin Martin covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in a KERA interview “Thanks To CT Scans, Scientists Know A Lot About Texas’ Pawpawsaurus Dinosaur.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native from what is now Tarrant County, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

The KERA interview was aired June 29, 2016.

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs, a world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, joined SMU’s faculty in 1983 and in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Hear the KERA segment.

EXCERPT:

By Justin Martin
KERA
CT scans aren’t just for people — they can also be used on dinosaurs.

A skull from the Pawpawsaurus was discovered in North Texas in the early ’90s. It was recently scanned, allowing scientists to digitally rebuild the dinosaur’s brain. Louis Jacobs is a professor of paleontology at SMU and he talks about his research.

Interview Highlights: Louis Jacobs …

… on the reason behind the name Pawpawsaurus: “It was named Pawpawsaurus because the rock unit that it was found in is called the Pawpaw formation and that’s in Fort Worth.”

… on what the CT scan uncovered: “Basically, a CT scan, you are X-raying through the body and then you can make 3D digital models of what’s recorded. We do it with humans and medicine all the time, but dinosaurs and fossils require more energy. So, the X-rays are put through with more energy and you can get a good model.”

… on how you go from scanning to rebuilding a brain: “Visualization through software is … you can see inside the Earth, you can see inside the clouds, you can see inside people, you can see inside everything. The advances in the software make digital visualization accessible. We had the data from scanning the skull of Pawpawsaurus and then from that we rendered 3D models of the brain and also the nasal passages to figure out how the air went through.

Hear the KERA segment.

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Seeker.com: Giant Sinkholes Near Texas Oil Fields Are Growing

New holes are also developing to join them, a satellite study shows.

Wink sinkholes

Online news site Seeker.com covered the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. Seeker.com’s article, “Giant Sinkholes Near Texas Oil Fields Are Growing,” published June 16, 2016.

The Dedman College geophysicists are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images to reveal ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. They found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

Request an interview

Zhong LU, SMU, Wink SinkholesTo request an interview with Zhong Lu call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

Request an interview

Jinwoo Kim, SMU, Wink sinkholes, InSARTo request an interview with Jin-woo Kim call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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Pawpaw skull, SMU, dinosaur, Texas, armored, Ankylosaur, PawPawsaurus, Tarrant CountyEarly armored dino from Texas lacked cousin’s club-tail weapon, but had a nose for danger
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InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

Seeker.com
In west Texas, they call them the “Wink Sinks.” They’re two giant sinkholes between the towns of Wink and Kermit, the after-affect of a lot of oil being pumped out of the ground in the area more than 60 years ago. And now researchers have discovered that the oddball landmarks — already the size of multiple football fields — are unstable and likely to grow even bigger.

Southern Methodist University geophysicists utilized a time series of radar images captured by an orbiting satellite 435 miles overhead to study the sinkholes. They used a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, to detect changes that aren’t visible to a person at ground level.

Their study, published in the journal Remote Sensing, found that the extent of subsidence in the area has increased significantly over the past seven years, and that the instability originally caused by oil drilling now is being driven by changing groundwater levels.

As the groundwater increases, it dissolves a massive underground salt formation in the area, which then causes the ground to sink.

That’s a problem, because the Wink Sinks already are pretty big. Wink Sink No. 1, which is closer to the town of Kermit, has grown since 1980 to 361 feet across. Wink Sink No. 2, which is nine-tenths of a mile to the south, is about 900 feet across at its widest point.

But to make matters worse, other parts of the area around the sinkholes is sinking as well. The highest rate of ground subsidence is in an area about seven-tenths of a mile northeast of No. 2, which is collapsing at a rate of more than 5 inches per year.

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities,” research scientist Jin-Woo Kim, who co-authored the study with SMU professor Zhong Lu, explained in a press release. He explained that a more massive collapse “could be catastrophic.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Star-Telegram: Two giant sinkholes in West Texas expanding, researchers say

“They’re a ways off from the highway; if nobody mentions it, then nobody is interested in it,” Kermit City Manager Gloria Saenz told the New York Daily News.

Wink sinkholes

Fort Worth Star-Telegram journalist Tom Uhler covered the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. Uhler’s article, “Two giant sinkholes in West Texas expanding, researchers say,” published June 16, 2016.

The Dedman College geophysicists are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images to reveal ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. They found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

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Zhong LU, SMU, Wink SinkholesTo request an interview with Zhong Lu call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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Jinwoo Kim, SMU, Wink sinkholes, InSARTo request an interview with Jin-woo Kim call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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Simmons Faculty Peter Weyand In Physiology Locomotor LabGood news! You’re likely burning more calories than you thought

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Tom Uhler
Star-Telegram
A couple of giant sinkholes in the West Texas oil patch are apparently expanding, and might eventually converge into one gigantic hole.

The sinkholes are about a mile apart and sit between Wink and Kermit off I-20 west of Midland-Odessa. They were caused by lots of oil and gas extraction, which peaked from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s, according to researchers at Southern Methodist University.

Satellite radar images indicate that the giant sinkholes are expanding and that new ones are forming “at an alarming rate” as nearby subsidence occurs, they report in the scientific journal Remote Sensing. One is 361 feet across, about the size of a football field; the other is larger, 670 to 900 feet across.

“A collapse could be catastrophic,” said geophysicist Jin-Woo Kim, who leads the SMU geophysical team reporting the findings.

In addition to Wink and Kermit (combined pop. about 7,000), there’s lots of oil and gas production equipment and installations and hazardous liquid pipelines in the area, Kim said in the report. The fresh water injected underground in the extraction process “can dissolve the interbedded salt layers and accelerate the sinkhole collapse.”

There’s something not too dissimilar happening in Daisetta, east of Houston.

Officials have fenced off the area around the sinkholes between Wink and Kermit and they’ll be monitored, but residents don’t appear to be worried about them.

“They’re a ways off from the highway; if nobody mentions it, then nobody is interested in it,” Kermit City Manager Gloria Saenz told the New York Daily News.

A preacher of the Apocalypse from Indiana had a decidedly different take, exclaiming on YouTube: “Here’s my concern. It’s like hell is being enlarged, and that without measure.”

Well, maybe not quite.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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New York Daily News: Giant sinkholes in Texas are growing, may collide: study

The sinkholes are a little less than a mile apart, but that distance is closing as the land directly around both holes subsides about 2 inches each year.

Wink sinkholes

New York Daily News journalist Anthony Izaguirre covered the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. Izaguirre’s article, “Giant sinkholes in Texas are growing, may collide: study,” published June 16, 2016.

The Dedman College geophysicists are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images to reveal ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. They found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

Request an interview

Zhong LU, SMU, Wink SinkholesTo request an interview with Zhong Lu call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

Request an interview

Jinwoo Kim, SMU, Wink sinkholes, InSARTo request an interview with Jin-woo Kim call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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More SMU Research news

Pawpaw skull, SMU, dinosaur, Texas, armored, Ankylosaur, PawPawsaurus, Tarrant CountyEarly armored dino from Texas lacked cousin’s club-tail weapon, but had a nose for danger
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M74, SN13ej peak, supernova, 30 million miles, SMU, ROTSE, McDonaldNearby massive star explosion 30 million years ago equaled brightness of 100 million suns

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Anthony Izaguirre
New York Daily News
Two massive, rapidly expanding sinkholes in Texas are at risk of collapsing into each other and causing a “catastrophic” natural disaster, scientists warned.

Geophysicists at Southern Methodist University found that the land around the gaping sinkholes between the west Texas towns of Wink and Kermit is deteriorating — which could end up either forming more holes or creating one giant sinkhole.

These sinkholes, which were caused by the area’s oil and gas extraction industries, are nothing new to Texas residents.

The first hole, Wink Sink #1, opened up in 1980 and is currently about as wide as a football field.

Wink Sink #2, the larger of the two holes, opened in 2002 and stretches for 900 feet at its widest point.

The sinkholes are a little less than a mile apart, but that distance is closing as the land directly around both holes subsides about 2 inches each year.

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities,” Jin-Woo Kim, a coauthor of the report, said in a statement. “A collapse could be catastrophic.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Daily Mail: The two massive and mysterious Texas sinkholes on the verge of creating one colossal lake

‘A collapse could be catastrophic. Following our study, we are collecting more high-resolution satellite data over the sinkholes and neighboring regions to monitor further development and collapse.’

Wink sinkholes

London Daily Mail online journalist Ashley Collman covered the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. Collman’s article, “The two massive and mysterious Texas sinkholes on the verge of creating one colossal lake,” published June 16, 2016.

The Dedman College researchers are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images to reveal ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. They found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Ashley Collman
London Daily Mail
Scientists have issued a grave warning to a small Texas community home to two growing sinkholes.

Geologists at Southern Methodist University say the two sinkholes in Wink and neighboring Kermit, Texas are growing more unstable, and could spark more sinkholes or join to create one massive hole.

This will prove devastating to the local community, which has a combined population of almost 7,000.

SMU researchers Zhong Lu and Jin-Woo Kim recently published their sober warning in a recent article in the journal Remote Sensing.

‘This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities. The intrusion of freshwater to underground can dissolve the interbedded salt layers and accelerate the sinkhole collapse,’ co-author Kim said in a press release.

‘A collapse could be catastrophic. Following our study, we are collecting more high-resolution satellite data over the sinkholes and neighboring regions to monitor further development and collapse.’

Lu and Kim discovered that the two holes were growing more unstable by using satellite images that measures depressions in the earth’s crust.

The satellite data found that the two holes – which are located about a mile apart – are rapidly growing and causing the ground around them to become more and more unstable – opening up the possibility of more sinkholes or the creation of one giant sinkhole.

The sinkhole in Wink is the oldest and smallest of the two sinkholes, but it is growing the fastest.

Right now it is about 361 feet across – or the length of a football field.

‘Even though Wink No. 1 collapsed in 1980, its neighboring areas are still subsiding,’ say the authors, ‘and the sinkhole continues to expand.’

Read the full story.

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Grist: Massive sinkholes in Texas could combine to form even massiver sinkhole

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities,” said study author Jin-Woo Kim in a press release. “A collapse could be catastrophic.”

Wink sinkholes

Grist.org journalist Katie Herzog covered the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. Herzog’s article, “Massive sinkholes in Texas could combine to form even massiver sinkhole,” published June 15, 2016.

The Dedman College faculty are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images to reveal ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. They found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

Request an interview

Zhong LU, SMU, Wink SinkholesTo request an interview with Zhong Lu call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

Request an interview

Jinwoo Kim, SMU, Wink sinkholes, InSARTo request an interview with Jin-woo Kim call SMU News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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More SMU Research news

Pawpaw skull, SMU, dinosaur, Texas, armored, Ankylosaur, PawPawsaurus, Tarrant CountyEarly armored dino from Texas lacked cousin’s club-tail weapon, but had a nose for danger
atlas, CERN, smu, physics, proton, quarkSMU physicists: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider is once again smashing protons, taking data
M74, SN13ej peak, supernova, 30 million miles, SMU, ROTSE, McDonaldNearby massive star explosion 30 million years ago equaled brightness of 100 million suns
Stele examined 150x120Text in lost language may reveal god or goddess worshipped by Etruscans at ancient temple

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Katie Herzog
Grist.org
Welcome to West Texas, where sometimes the ground just opens up under your feet.

Two existing sinkholes — one in the adorably named town of Wink, the other in the absurdly named town of Kermit — are about a mile away from each other, but data suggests they might be expanding. Researchers from Southern Methodist University analyzed radar images of the area and found some hints of movement in the surrounding ground. If the sinkholes keep growing, it’s possible they will merge into one supermassive sinkhole.

And that would be a big problem indeed.

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities,” said study author Jin-Woo Kim in a press release. “A collapse could be catastrophic.”

Sinkholes are not uncommon in this part of West Texas, thanks to the area’s prolific oil and gas industries. These particular sinkholes, however, are large even by Texas standards: The hole in Wink, which formed in 1980, is 361 feet across — or the length of a football field — and its neighbor in Kermit varies between 600 and 900 feet across. Both are over 100 feet deep.

Sinkholes occur when water dissolves bedrock over time, and then — sometimes suddenly — the ground collapses. They can be just a few feet across, or, like these ones, big enough to hold buildings. (A 2013 sinkhole opened up under the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky., and swallowed eight classic cars.) And while sinkholes can form naturally, they are also created by human activity like oil and gas extraction.

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Geohazard: Giant sinkholes near West Texas oil patch towns are growing — as new ones lurk

Satellite radar images reveal ground movement of infamous sinkholes near Wink, Texas; suggest the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Residents of Wink and neighboring Kermit have grown accustomed to the two giant sinkholes that sit between their small West Texas towns.

But now radar images taken of the sinkholes by an orbiting space satellite reveal big changes may be on the horizon.

A new study by geophysicists at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, finds the massive sinkholes are unstable, with the ground around them subsiding, suggesting the holes could pose a bigger hazard sometime in the future.

The two sinkholes — about a mile apart — appear to be expanding. Additionally, areas around the existing sinkholes are unstable, with large areas of subsidence detected via satellite radar remote sensing.

That leaves the possibility that new sinkholes, or one giant sinkhole, may form, said geophysicists and study co-authors Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.

“This area is heavily populated with oil and gas production equipment and installations, hazardous liquid pipelines, as well as two communities. The intrusion of freshwater to underground can dissolve the interbedded salt layers and accelerate the sinkhole collapse,” said Kim, who leads the SMU geophysical team reporting the findings. “A collapse could be catastrophic. Following our study, we are collecting more high-resolution satellite data over the sinkholes and neighboring regions to monitor further development and collapse.”

Lu and Kim reported the findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Unstable ground linked to rising, falling groundwater
The sinkholes were originally caused by the area’s prolific oil and gas extraction, which peaked from 1926 to 1964. Wink Sink No. 1, near the Hendricks oil well 10-A, opened in 1980. Wink Sink No. 2, near Gulf WS-8 supply well, opened 22 years later in 2002.

It appears the area’s unstable ground now is linked to changing groundwater levels and dissolving minerals, say the scientists. A deep-seated salt bed underlies the area, part of the massive oil-rich Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico.

With the new data, the SMU geophysicists found a high correlation between groundwater level in the underlying aquifer and further sinking of the surface area during the summer months, influenced by successive roof failures in underlying cavities.

Satellite images and groundwater records indicate that when groundwater levels rise, the ground lifts. But the presence of that same groundwater then speeds the dissolving of the underground salt, which then causes the ground surface to subside.

Everything’s bigger in Texas, and the Wink sinkholes are no exception
Officials have fenced off the two sinkholes near Wink, a town of about 940 people, and Kermit, a town of about 6,000 people. The giant holes are notable features on the area’s vast plains, which are dotted mostly with oil pump jacks, storage facilities, occasional brush and mesquite trees.

Based on modeling of satellite image datasets, SMU’s researchers report that Wink Sink No. 1, which is closer to the town of Kermit, appears to be the most unstable. The smaller hole of the two, it has grown to 361 feet (110 meters) across — the length of a football field.

“Even though Wink No. 1 collapsed in 1980, its neighboring areas are still subsiding,” say the authors, “and the sinkhole continues to expand.” An oval-shaped deformation circling the sinkhole measures three-tenths of a mile (500 meters) wide and is subsiding up to 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) a year.

Wink Sink No. 2, which is nine-tenths of a mile south of No. 1 and which sits closer to the town of Wink, is the larger of the sinkholes. It varies from 670 feet to 900 feet across.

Wink No. 2 is not experiencing as much subsidence as Wink No. 1. However, its eastern side is collapsing and eroding westward at a rate of up to 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) a year.

“Wink No. 2 exhibits depression associated with the ongoing expansion of the underground cavity,” the authors report.

Some ground that doesn’t even border the edges of the two sinkholes is also subsiding, the scientists observed. An area more than half a mile (1 kilometer) northeast of No. 2 sank at a rate of 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) in just four months.

Ground northeast of sinkholes is subsiding, suggesting new ones forming
The largest rate of ground subsidence is not at either sinkhole, but at an area about seven-tenths of a mile (1.2 kilometers) northeast of No. 2. Ground there is subsiding at a rate of more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) a year.

It’s aerial extent, the researchers report, has also enlarged over the past eight years when a previous survey was done.

“The enlarged deformation could be an alarming precursor to the potential future development of hazards in the vicinity,” said the authors.

Additionally, ground along a road traveled by oil field vehicles, about a quarter mile (400 meters) directly north of No. 2, is subsiding about 1.2 inches (3 centimeters) a year.

Ground’s movement detected with radar technique
The satellite radar datasets were collected over five months between April 2015 and August 2015. With them, the geophysicists observed both two-dimension east-west deformation of the sinkholes, as well as vertical deformation.

The SMU scientists used a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR for short, to detect changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye.

“From 435 miles above the Earth’s surface, this InSAR technique allows us to measure inch-level subsidence on the ground. This is a monumental human achievement, and scientists will not stop endeavoring to improve this technique for more precise measurements,” said Lu, who is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Simply put, Sentinel-1A bounces a radar signal off the earth, then records the signal as it bounces back, delivering measurements. The measurements allow geophysicists to determine the distance from the satellite to the ground, revealing how features on the Earth’s surface change over time.

“Sinkhole formation has previously been unpredictable, but satellite remote sensing provides a great means to detect the expansion of the current sinkholes and possible development of new sinkholes,” said Kim. “Monitoring the sinkholes and modeling the rate of change can help predict potential sinkhole development.”

Sentinel-1A data were obtained from Sentinels Scientific Data Hub – Copernicus. Groundwater well data came from the Texas Water Development Board. — Margaret Allen, SMU

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Dallas Morning News: North Texas dino had tough armor, keen sense of smell

Jacobs said large nostrils that look “like a trumpet bell” and wide air passages helped Pawpawsaurus smell predators, look for food or find mates.

Dallas Morning News journalist Charles Scudder covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in a Guide Live article “North Texas dino had tough armor, keen sense of smell.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native from what is now Tarrant County, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

The Dallas Morning News article published May 27, 2016.

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs, a world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, joined SMU’s faculty in 1983 and in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Charles Scudder
Dallas Morning News
A prehistoric skull found 24 years ago by a teenager in Fort Worth is now helping scientists understand the brain functions of a North Texas native. Pawpawsaurus campbelli lived 100 million years ago and was identified in 1996 by Yuong-Nam Lee, then a doctoral student at Southern Methodist University.

Lee and Louis Jacobs, a paleontologist at SMU, have co-authored a new paper that used CT imaging to study the brain of Pawpawsaurus. It’s the first time we’ve seen inside the Pawpawsaurus skull, as few studies have been done on the endocranial anatomy — scientist-speak for brain and skull — of its biological family.

This North Texas dino is named for the Paw Paw Formation, a geological feature where fossils are found in Texas. It lived on the shores of an inland sea that stretched from the Gulf coast to the Arctic. Think the Narrow Sea from Game of Thrones. Dallas is somewhere around Valyria. Arizona is Dorne.

Pawpawsaurus was a herbivore with armored plates on its back and eyelids, but without the clubbed tail characteristic of its younger cousin, Ankylosaurus. It didn’t have the stable vision of Ankylosaurus that helped it wield the clubbed tail. And although Pawpawsaurus had impressive sensory ability compared to its contemporaries, it was still less-evolved than Ankylosaurus.

Read the full story.

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Live Science: Dino Senses: Ankylosaurus Cousin Had a Super Sniffer

Louis Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of the Cretaceous dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

Science journalist Laura Geggel covered the research of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs in her article “Dino Senses: Ankylosaurus Cousin Had a Super Sniffer.”

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of the Cretaceous Period dinosaur Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native from what is now Tarrant County, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

Pawpawsaurus campbelli is the prehistoric cousin of the well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus, famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail.

Jacobs, a world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist, joined SMU’s faculty in 1983 and in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
The armored cousin of the Ankylosaurus dinosaur didn’t have a football-size club on its tail, but it did have a super sense of smell, said scientists who examined its skull.

The Cretaceous-age Pawpawsaurus campbelli walked on all fours and lived in ancient Texas about 100 million years ago, the researchers said. It was an earlier version, so to speak, of the heavily armored Ankylosaurus, which lived about 35 million years later, they said.

But even without an impressive tail club, P. campbelli wasn’t totally defenseless. It sported armored plates on its back and eyelids. A computerized tomography (CT) scan of its braincase also suggests that the dinosaur had an excellent sense of smell for finding prey and avoiding predators.

“CT imaging has allowed us to delve into the intricacies of the brains of extinct animals, especially dinosaurs, to unlock secrets of their ways of life,” study co-author Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, said in a statement.

P. campbelli could have outsniffed other primitive dinosaur predators, including Ceratosaurus, a bipedal, meat-eating dinosaur with blade-like teeth and a horn on its snoutthat lived during the Jurassic period, the researchers said.

CT scans suggest that P. campbelli’s sense of smell — calculated by comparing the size of the brain’s olfactory bulb to the cerebral hemisphere — is somewhat less powerful than that of Ankylosaurus, said study lead researcher Ariana Paulina-Carabajal, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Biodiversity and Environment Research Institute (CONICET-INIBIOMA) in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina.

“Although both [P. campbelli and Ankylosaurus] have high ratios when compared with most carnivorous dinosaurs,” she said, “they are exceeded only by carcharodontosaurids and tyrannosaurids.”

Read the full story.

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Early armored dino from Texas lacked cousin’s club-tail weapon, but had a nose for danger

Pawpawsaurus’s hearing wasn’t keen, and it lacked the infamous tail club of Ankylosaurus. But first-ever CT scans of Pawpawsaurus’s skull indicate the dino’s saving grace from predators may have been an acute sense of smell.

Well-known armored dinosaur Ankylosaurus is famous for a hard knobby layer of bone across its back and a football-sized club on its tail for wielding against meat-eating enemies.

It’s prehistoric cousin, Pawpawsaurus campbelli, was not so lucky. Pawpawsaurus was an earlier version of armored dinosaurs but not as well equipped to fight off meat-eaters, according to a new study, said vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Jacobs is co-author of a new analysis of Pawpawsaurus based on the first CT scans ever taken of the dinosaur’s skull.

A Texas native, Pawpawsaurus lived 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, making its home along the shores of an inland sea that split North America from Texas northward to the Arctic Sea.

Like Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus had armored plate across its back and on its eyelids. But unlike Ankylosaurus, Pawpawsaurus didn’t have the signature club tail that was capable of knocking the knees out from under a large predator.

Ankylosaurus lived about 35 million years after Pawpawsaurus, around 66 million years ago toward the end of the Cretaceous. During the course of its evolution, ankylosaurids developed the club tail, and bone structure in its skull that improved its sense of smell and allowed it to hear a broader range of sounds. “Stable gaze” also emerged, which helped Ankylosaurus balance while wielding its clubbed tail.

“CT imaging has allowed us to delve into the intricacies of the brains of extinct animals, especially dinosaurs, to unlock secrets of their ways of life,” said Jacobs, a professor in the SMU Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

While Pawpawsaurus’s sense of smell was inferior to Ankylosaurus, it was still sharper than some primitive dinosaur predators such as Ceratosaurus, said vertebrate paleontologist Ariana Paulina-Carabajal, first author on the study.

“Pawpawsaurus in particular, and the group it belonged to — Nodosauridae — had no flocculus, a structure of the brain involved with motor skills, no club tail, and a reduced nasal cavity and portion of the inner ear when compared with the other family of ankylosaurs,” said Paulina-Carabajal, researcher for the Biodiversity and Environment Research Institute (CONICET-INIBIOMA), San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. “But its sense of smell was very important, as it probably relied on that to look for food, find mates and avoid or flee predators.”

Most dinosaurs don’t have bony ridges in their nasal cavities to guide airflow, but ankylosaurs are unique in that they do.

“We can observe the complete nasal cavity morphology with the CT scans,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “The CT scans revealed an enlarged nasal cavity compared to dinosaurs other than ankylosaurians. That may have helped Pawpawsaurus bellow out a lower range of vocalizations, improved its sense of smell, and cooled the inflow of air to regulate the temperature of blood flowing into the brain.”

First CT scans shed light on Pawpawsaurus’s sensory tools
Pawpawsaurus is more primitive than the younger derived versions of the dinosaur that evolved later, Jacobs said, although both walked on all fours and held their heads low to the ground.

“So we don’t know if their sense of smell also evolved and improved even more,” Jacobs said. “But we do suspect that scenting the environment was useful for a creature’s survival, and the sense of smell is fairly widely distributed among plant eaters and meat eaters alike.”

The team’s measurements and conclusions are reported in the journal PLosONE in the article “Endocranial Morphology of the Primitive Nodosaurid Dinosaur Pawpawsaurus campbelli from the Early Cretaceous of North America.” It is published online at PLosONE.

The skull was identified in 1996 by Yuong-Nam Lee, Seoul National University, Korea, a co-author on the paper, who was then a doctoral student under Jacobs.

The team’s discoveries emerged from Computed Tomography (CT) scans of the braincase of Pawpawsaurus campbelli’s skull. Pawpawsaurus belongs to one of the least explored clades of dinosaurs when it comes to endocranial anatomy — the spaces in the skull housing the brain.

The Pawpawsaurus skull was discovered 24 years ago by 19-year-old Cameron Campbell in the PawPaw Formation of Tarrant County near Dallas. Conventional analysis of the skull was carried out years ago to identify it as a never-before-seen nodosaurid ankylosaur. However, these are the first CT scans of Pawpawsaurus’s skull because it’s only been in recent years that fossils have been widely explored with X-rays.

In humans, a medical CT will scan the body to “see inside” with X-rays and capture a 3-D picture of the bones, blood vessels and soft tissue. In fossils, a much stronger dose of radiation than can be tolerated by humans is applied to fossils to capture 3-D images of the interior structure.

From the scans, paleontologists can then digitally reconstruct the brain and inner ear using special software.

“Once we have the 3D model, we can describe and measure all its different regions,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “We can then compare that to existing reptile brains and their senses of hearing and smell. Hearing, for example, can be determined from the size of the lagena, the region of the inner ear that perceives sounds.”

The size of the lagena in Pawpawsaurus suggests a sense of hearing similar to that of living crocodiles, she said.

Olfactory acuity, the sense of smell, is calculated from the size ratio of the olfactory bulb of the brain and the cerebral hemisphere.

“In Pawpawsaurus, the olfactory ratio is somewhat lower than it is in Ankyloxaurus, although both have high ratios when compared with most carnivorous dinosarus,” Paulina-Carabajal said. “They are exceeded only by carcharodontosaurids and tyrannosaurids. The olfactory ratios of ankylosaurs in general are more or less similar to those calculated by other authors for the living crocodile.”

The research was funded by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (Argentina), Seoul National University, and SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man. — Margaret Allen, SMU

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Live Science: Fearsome Dinosaur-Age ‘Hammerhead’ Reptile Ate … Plants?

SMU paleontologist Louis Jacobs quoted by Live Science for article on prehistoric plant-eating reptile

Hammerhead reptile, vegetarian, Jacobs, SMU

Science journalist Laura Geggel tapped the expertise of SMU Earth Sciences Professor Louis L. Jacobs for a recent article about a prehistoric plant-eating reptile.

A professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Jacobs is a world-renowned vertebrate paleontologist.

He joined SMU’s faculty in 1983 and in 2012 was honored by the 7,200-member Science Teachers Association of Texas with their prestigious Skoog Cup for his significant contributions to advance quality science education.

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To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)

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Jacobs is president of SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
Despite its rows and rows of chisel- and needle-like teeth, a newly described prehistoric marine reptile wasn’t a fearsome predator but rather an herbivorous giant that acted like a lawnmower for the sea, a new study finds.

The crocodile-size reptile lived about 242 million years ago, during the Middle Triassic period. Researchers discovered the first specimen in 2014 in southern China, but because it was poorly preserved, they reported that it had a beak like a flamingo’s.

Now, two newly discovered specimens show that the beast was far more bizarre: It sported a hammerhead-shaped snout that it likely used to graze on plants lining the ocean floor, the researchers said. It’s also the earliest herbivorous marine reptile on record by about 8 million years, they said. [The 12 Weirdest Animal Discoveries]

“I haven’t seen anything like it before,” said study co-researcher Olivier Rieppel, the Rowe family curator of evolutionary biology at The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

Weird reptile
The reptile’s name — Atopodentatus unicus — hints at its weird anatomy. In Latin, the genus and species names translate to “unique strangely toothed,” the researchers said. The newly analyzed specimens show that the creature had a mouthful of chisel-shaped teeth — one row on the upper jaw and two rows on the lower jaw.

“The remaining parts of the jaw [are filled with] densely packed needle-shaped teeth forming a mesh,” the researchers wrote in the study, published online today (May 6) in the journal Science Advances. This mesh likely helped A. unicus collect plant material, much like a baleen whale catches krill, said Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas who was not involved in the study.

The chisel-like teeth probably acted as a rake and trimmer, helping A. unicus scrape and dislodge plants from the seafloor, Jacobs said. Next, the reptile likely sucked in a mouthful of water, letting bits of plants get stuck in the mesh formed by its thin, needle-like teeth, he said.

“Then, they squish the water out of their mouth, and those little teeth along the sides of the jaw and on the roof of the mouth strain out all of the plant bits,” Jacobs told Live Science. “That’s an amazing way to feed. I’d like to do that myself.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMU Research on Twitter, @smuresearch.

For more SMU research see www.smuresearch.com.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information, www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Dallas Morning News: Could Texas’ dirty coal power plants be replaced by geothermal systems?

“We all care about the earth,” said Maria Richards, SMU geothermal lab coordinator, in welcoming the attendees. “We are applying knowledge that is applying hope.”

geothermal map, SMU, Maria Richards, conference, Dallas

Biz Beat Blog reporter Jeffrey Weiss at The Dallas Morning News covered the 2016 SMU Geothermal Conference, “Power Plays: Geothermal Energy in Oil and Gas Fields.”

The conference was April 25-26 on the SMU campus in Dallas. The eighth international conference focused on using the oilfield as a base for alternative energy production through the capture of waste heat and fluids.

The geothermal technology that is the primary focus of the conference takes advantage of an existing resource frequently considered a nuisance – wastewater produced by oil and gas wells during extraction.

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To book a live or taped interview with Maria Richards in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

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As a well ages it will typically produce more water and less oil or gas over time, which raises the cost of production. Where the produced wastewater is hot enough, and the water flow rate is sufficient, specially designed turbines can draw geothermal energy from the wastewater.

The SMU Geothermal Lab team members are leaders of academic data sources for exploration and assessment of existing and potential geothermal resources.

SMU scientists developed the Geothermal Map of North America and built one of the primary nodes of the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) for temperature and oil/gas data. Their research efforts include over 50 years of continuous thermal data collection and is viewed by the community as an important first-stage resource used in determining the potential for geothermal energy production in the United States.

The SMU Geothermal Lab has been the recipient of approximately $10 million in research grants from a variety of sources, including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Texas State Energy Conservation Office, Google.org and private industry.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Jeffrey Weiss
Dallas Morning News
For Texas electricity customers, geothermal energy is pretty much an afterthought. But some scientists — and even some people in the oil and gas business — say that heat from deep underground may become a significant source of power.

At least, that’s the message at a conference held today at Southern Methodist University, hosted by the school’s geothermal laboratory. The event pulled together an unusual mix: Academics, oil company bosses, people hawking heat-transfer equipment, geothermal experts and a few environmentalists.

This was the eighth such conference held at SMU since 2006. Those who have been to several agreed that the biggest difference over time is that the presentations have shifted from blue-sky theory to some data from working projects.

Perhaps the loudest applause for the day was when Will Gosnold of the University of North Dakota ended his talk about a demonstration project with a slide of an email saying it had started generating electricity today.

Another presenter suggested that geothermal power could be an economically sensible replacement for existing coal-fired power plants, particularly if the existing power plants and their transmission lines are near coal mines. That’s the case in Texas.

Susan Petty, president of Seattle-based AltaRock Energy, told the group that many older coal plants will be unable to meet clean-air requirements and will need replacing in the next few years. Waste water used in coal mines could be injected into wells where natural heat would make the water hot enough to drive geothermal power generators, she said.

Read the full story.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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SMU “Power Plays” conference to promote development of oil and gas fields for geothermal energy production

“Power Plays,” on Dallas campus April 25-26, is SMU Geothermal Laboratory’s eighth international energy conference and workshop

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To book a live or taped interview with Maria Richards in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

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SMU’s renowned SMU Geothermal Laboratory will host its eighth international energy conference April 25-26 on the Dallas campus, focused on using the oilfield as a base for alternative energy production through the capture of waste heat and fluids.

In addition to oil and gas field geothermal projects, experts will discuss coal plant conversion for geothermal production, the intersection of geothermal energy and desalination, and large-scale direct use of the energy source produced by the internal heat of the earth.

“Power Plays” begins with an opening reception and poster session from 5:30 p.m. – 8 p.m. Monday, April 25, followed by a daylong program of speakers and presentations Tuesday, April 26. Conference details are available here. Walk-up registration is available at the conference site, the Collins Center at 3150 Binkley Avenue, Dallas, 75205.

The technology that is the primary focus of the conference takes advantage of an existing resource frequently considered a nuisance – wastewater produced by oil and gas wells during extraction. As a well ages it will typically produce more water and less oil or gas over time, which raises the cost of production. Where the produced wastewater is hot enough, and the water flow rate is sufficient, specially designed turbines can draw geothermal energy from the wastewater.

That “bonus” geothermal energy can be used to either generate electricity to operate the oil field equipment and lower the cost of production, sell the electricity directly to the power grid or — more likely — to nearby industry users seeking a highly secure electrical source.

“Initial demonstration projects have taught us a great deal about the complexities of transitioning an oil or gas well to geothermal energy production,” said Maria Richards, director of the SMU Geothermal Lab. “Collaboration continues between the oil and gas industry and the geothermal community, and this conference is the place to hear about the technology, business models and legislation that all play a role in developing geothermal resources. We are confident that geothermal energy production will one day be the norm for an aging oil and gas field.”

The appearance of AltaRock Energy’s Susan Petty to discuss “Transitioning Coal to Geothermal: Baseload Renewable Power With No CO2” will be the first examination of this type of geothermal production at the SMU conference, Richards said, adding that she is pleased to see geothermal technology being combined with other energy systems, from large scale solar operations to electricity generated by on-site flare gas.

“The small surface footprint of geothermal energy makes it a desirable player for developers looking to maximize all possible resources on their site,” Richards said.

SMU’s Geothermal Lab team members are leaders of academic data sources for exploration and assessment of existing and potential geothermal resources. SMU scientists developed the Geothermal Map of North America and built one of the primary nodes of the National Geothermal Data System (NGDS) for temperature and oil/gas data. Their research efforts include over 50 years of continuous thermal data collection and is viewed by the community as an important first-stage resource used in determining the potential for geothermal energy production in the United States.

The SMU Geothermal Lab has been the recipient of approximately $10 million in research grants from a variety of sources, including the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Texas State Energy Conservation Office, Google.org and private industry. — Kim Cobb

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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SMU seismology team response to March 28, 2016 U.S. Geological Survey hazard forecasts

Southern Methodist University preliminary earthquake catalog for the Irving-Dallas earthquake swarm. The SMU North Texas seismic network has recorded over 600 earthquakes ranging from magnitude 0.0-3.6 in the Dallas-Irving region. Earthquakes recorded prior to Jan. 17, 2015 have a higher location uncertainty than events recorded after the complete seismic network was installed. Current seismic sensors recording the sequence are shown as gray symbols; note that some sensors are outside of the map boundaries. US Geological Survey NetQuakes data (squares) can be viewed online. Earthquake symbol size is scaled by magnitude and color coded by date of occurrence. The map is provided as part of the ongoing collaboration between SMU, the USGS, Irving, Dallas, and neighboring cities. The SMU preliminary earthquake locations and magnitudes have not been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and are subject to change. Prepared March 22, 2016.
Southern Methodist University preliminary earthquake catalog for the Irving-Dallas earthquake swarm. The SMU North Texas seismic network has recorded over 600 earthquakes ranging from magnitude 0.0-3.6 in the Dallas-Irving region. Earthquakes recorded prior to Jan. 17, 2015 have a higher location uncertainty than events recorded after the complete seismic network was installed. Current seismic sensors recording the sequence are shown as gray symbols; note that some sensors are outside of the map boundaries. US Geological Survey NetQuakes data (squares) can be viewed online. Earthquake symbol size is scaled by magnitude and color coded by date of occurrence. The map is provided as part of the ongoing collaboration between SMU, the USGS, Irving, Dallas, and neighboring cities. The SMU preliminary earthquake locations and magnitudes have not been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature and are subject to change. Prepared March 22, 2016.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS) today released maps showing potential ground shaking from induced and natural earthquakes, including forecasts for the DFW metropolitan area. The North Texas Earthquake Study at Southern Methodist University provided data, and SMU scientists co-authored peer-reviewed publications cited in the report. The new earthquake ground shaking forecasts are a reminder to the cities and residents in the region that the occurrence of earthquakes increases the earthquake hazard in the area, regardless of cause. Residents should be prepared to experience ground shaking, just as we are prepared to experience tornadoes, hail storms and other events.

FAQs
1. How did SMU research contribute to the USGS report?
SMU and partners currently operate a 30-station seismic network across North Texas, and stations are denser around the ongoing earthquake sequences (Azle-Reno, Irving-Dallas, and Venus-Johnson County). We focus on cataloging the ongoing seismicity over a wider range of magnitudes than the national USGS catalog documents, conducting detailed source studies to understand the physics of faulting, and identifying and mapping faults currently or potentially generating seismicity. We also study cause with the aim of potentially mitigating the increased seismicity rates experienced in North Texas since 2008. Finally, in order to provide improved local estimates of both the size of the earthquakes as well as their source characteristics, we are analyzing the locally recorded waveforms to produce empirical estimates of how ground shaking decays with range for each of the instrumented source regions. These empirical decay rates may provide data for refining the ground shaking forecasts.

The SMU research in its entirety helps inform appropriate parameter ranges for earthquake hazard mapping, and we therefore collaborate and cooperate with the USGS, as was done in preparation for the 2016 report being released Monday, and with city, state and federal agencies.

Peer-reviewed publications by SMU scientists and collaborators were used to classify most North Texas earthquakes as induced. These publications include those on the 2008-2009 DFW sequence (Frohlich et al., 2011), the 2009 Cleburne earthquakes (Justinic et al., 2012), and the 2013-2014 Azle-Reno earthquakes (Hornbach et al., 2015). Dr. Cliff Frohlich (UT-Austin) has published on induced earthquakes in Johnson County near the eventual 2015 Venus earthquake (Frohlich, 2012). Peer-reviewed publications regarding cause for the Irving-Dallas sequence had not been accepted for publication and the earthquakes were left classified as “undetermined cause” in the 2016 Induced Earthquake Hazard Mapping Project and treated as natural earthquakes in the probabilistic calculations for ground motion.

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Book a live or taped interview with an SMU seismologist in the SMU Broadcast Studio. Call 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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2. What can and should DFW Metroplex residents do with this information?
The new earthquake ground shaking forecasts are a reminder to the cities and residents in the region that the occurrence of earthquakes increases the earthquake hazard in the area, regardless of cause. Residents should be prepared to experience ground shaking, just as we are prepared to experience tornadoes, hail storms and other events. People should remember to Drop, Cover and Hold On during an earthquake and not to evacuate a building until after shaking has stopped. Brick façade damage is possible under low to mid-intensity shaking, and you are most likely to be injured by falling objects and broken windows than by building collapse at the levels of ground shaking outlined in the USGS report.

We encourage residents to explore online resources on preparedness, such as the resources made available through FEMA and the USGS. Following the seven steps to earthquake safety is always a good idea: http://earthquakecountry.org/sevensteps/.

3. Have you been recording earthquakes in the Dallas-Irving area or has that sequence stopped?
The Irving-Dallas earthquakes began in April 2014 with the largest events occurring in January 2015. Earthquake rates in the Dallas-Irving area have been highly variable. While the rate has decreased over the last few months, we have seen similar short-term decreases in the past, and therefore the rate change should not be over-interpreted.

4. What is the earthquake magnitude equivalent of the USGS ground shaking forecast?
Earthquake magnitude is not the same as ground shaking intensity. Hazard maps are used to forecast ground shaking intensities, regardless of the magnitude of the earthquake that creates the motion. Ground motion, and hence hazard, depends on the earthquake size, distance from the epicenter, local geology, etc. Online resources equating intensity to magnitude are “rule of thumb” and should not be interpreted as directly relating the ground shaking forecasts to earthquake magnitude in the DFW area. Risk calculations use the known properties of building and infrastructure to estimate the probability of damage based on the underlying hazard assessment from ground shaking intensities.

Magnitude tells you the overall size of the earthquake. A single earthquake has one magnitude.

Intensity tells you what the earthquake shaking was like at a particular location. A single earthquake produces a range of intensities that depend on the location. The USGS “Did you feel it?” for the 2015 Irving-Dallas M3.6 illustrates this point. The Modified Mercalli Scale is described further here: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/mercalli.php. — Kim Cobb

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Daily Mail: Earth’s moon threw a ‘wobbly’ after it formed: Lunar poles wandered 125 MILES as volcanic bubbles threw them off balance

327EC6E200000578-3506346-Scientists_say_they_have_discovered_evidence_that_the_Moon_s_axi-a-3_1458751653451

Science reporter Richard Gray with The Daily Mail covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “Earth’s moon threw a ‘wobbly’ after it formed: Lunar poles wandered 125 MILES as volcanic bubbles threw them off balance,” published March 23. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

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EXCERPT:

By Richard Gray
The Daily Mail
They are among the coldest places in the solar system, covered in deposits of ice that are thought to be billions of years old.

But the moon’s north and south poles may have shifted during its 4.53 billion-year history, according to evidence uncovered in a new study.

A team of astrophysicists claims to have found distinct matching patches of ice at either pole that indicate the tilt of the Earth’s satellite has changed as it has aged.

They said this may have occurred as the interior of the moon cooled and solidified, while other areas bubbled upwards, altering the spin of the rocky world.

The authors explained that volcanic activity in an area known as the Procellarum region around three billion years ago threw the entire moon off balance, causing it to shift its axis by around six degrees.

This caused the moon’s poles to move by around 125 miles (201km) over the course of a billion years.

Dr Matt Siegler, a planetary scientist at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who was part of the team to make the discovery, said: ‘Billions of years ago, heating within the Moon’s interior caused the face we see to shift upward as the pole physically changed positions.

‘It would be as if Earth’s axis relocated from Antarctica to Australia. As the pole moved, the Man on the Moon turned his nose up at the Earth,’ Siegler said.

Dr Siegler and his colleagues used data gathered by Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbitor which has mapped the hydrogen deposits around the moon’s poles.

They found the polar hydrogen reserves, which are thought to be in the form of water ice in craters, are spread over distinct but matching patterns on either side of the moon.

The researchers said this suggests the lunar spin axis must have shifted, causing the polar regions to become displaced.
This left a permanent record painted out on the surface in ice.

Relatively few planetary bodies are thought to have shifted their axis after forming.

The Earth, Mars, Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa are the only others known to have done so.

On Earth, polar wander is thought to have happened as the continental plates have shifted the mass of the planet while on Mars it occurred due to heavy volcanic region.

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

Wired: The Moon used to spin on a different axis

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Wired reporter Emily Reynolds covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “The Moon used to spin on a different axis,” published March 24. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Read the full story.

For more information

Matthew Siegler, lunar polar wander, nature, moon, SMU
To book a live or taped interview with Matthew Siegler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News, 214-768-7654, or email news@smu.edu.

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EXCERPT:

By Emily Reynolds
Wired
The Moon used to “spin on a different axis” that was subject to “polar wander,” a new study into the satellite’s early history has said.

The Planetary Science Institute study, published in Nature, highlights two regions full of hydrogen deposits near the Moon’s two poles. This, it says, suggests the presence of ice — ice that only would have survived if it had remained in permanent shadow.

“If the orientation of the Moon has changed, then the locations of the shadowed regions will also have changed,” the researchers write.

The poles “wandered”, according to the team, because of volcanic activity in the area, which would have warmed. It also would have made them less dense, causing the “wandering” of the axes.

“The Moon has a single region of the crust where radioactive elements ended up as the Moon was forming,” said Matthew Siegler, lead author of the study. “This radioactive crust acted like an oven broiler heating the mantle below.”

“This giant blob of hot mantle was lighter than cold mantle elsewhere, causing the whole Moon to move.”

The shift probably happened over three billion years ago, the team say, and would have meant the Moon showed a completely different face. Overall, the Moon shifted around six degrees over one billion years. Only a few other planetary bodies have been said to shift their axes — Earth and Mars, as well as two moons of Saturn and Jupiter.

“The same face of the Moon has not always pointed towards Earth,” said Siegler. “As the axis moved, so did the face of the Man in the Moon. He sort of turned his nose up at the Earth.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

Agence France-Presse in The Japan Times, Raw Story: Moon’s ‘wandering poles’ shifted long ago: study

moonpoles-afp-800x430

Agence France-Presse covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “Moon’s ‘wandering poles’ shifted long ago: study,” published March 24 at The Japan Times and Raw Story, among other news sites. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Read the full story.

For more information

Matthew Siegler, lunar polar wander, nature, moon, SMU
To book a live or taped interview with Matthew Siegler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News, 214-768-7654, or email news@smu.edu.

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Ancient north pole, lunar polar wander, siegler, natureNASA data leads to rare discovery: Earth’s moon wandered off axis billions of years ago
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EXCERPT:

By Agence France Presse
Telltale patches of water ice on opposite ends of the Moon reveal that Earth’s orbiting companion once spun on a different axis, according to a study released Wednesday.

The six-degree tilt, which happened several billion years ago, was likely caused by an ancient volcanic formation on the near side of the Moon, said the study, published in Nature.

The data underlying this startling discovery has been in plain view for nearly two decades, but scientists had failed to connect the dots, one of the researchers told AFP.

“It was kind of hidden because of the way we plotted polar maps,” explained co-author James Keane, a researcher at the University of Arizona.

Two-dimensional representations create a subtle distortion, obscuring the fact that observed concentrations of ice near each pole were exactly 180 degrees apart — and thus on an axis running through the dead centre of the Moon.

“That is my pet hypothesis about why nobody thought about this before,” Keane said.

The man who finally put the top-and-bottom pieces of the lunar puzzle together was co-author Rich Miller of the University of Alabama.

Having located the largest concentrations of water ice near the current north and south poles by detecting hydrogen molecules — the “H” in “H2O” — he rotated a 3-D model to see how they would line up.

“He found a Sigma-8 correlation,” which means that the odds of it being a coincidence were about one-in-a-million, said Keane.

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Researcher news SMU In The News

Smithsonian: Ancient Volcanoes May Have Shifted the Moon’s Poles

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Science reporter Danny Lewis with Smithsonian covered the research of SMU planetary scientist and research assistant professor Matthew Siegler and a team of scientists who discovered the moon wandered off its axis billions of years ago due to a shift in its mass most likely caused by volcanic activity.

The article, “Ancient Volcanoes May Have Shifted the Moon’s Poles,” published March 24. A report on the discovery of the rare event was published today in Nature: that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Read the full story.

For more information

Matthew Siegler, lunar polar wander, nature, moon, SMU
To book a live or taped interview with Matthew Siegler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News, 214-768-7654, or email news@smu.edu.

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EXCERPT:

By Danny Lewis
Smithsonian
The moon may not have always spun at the same angle it does today. According to a new study, patches of water ice that formed in craters on opposite sides of the moon suggest that its axis may have shifted billions of years ago.

While the moon doesn’t have much in the way of geologic activity anymore, about three billion years ago it was pulsing with volcanic activity beneath its surface. A team of planetary scientists say that all that magma sloshing around in the moon may have shifted its axis, moving its poles about six degrees to where they are today, Dani Cooper reports for ABC Science.

“It would be as if Earth’s axis relocated from Antarctica to Australia,” lead author Matthew Siegler, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute, says in a statement. “As the pole moved, the Man [in] the Moon turned his nose up at the Earth.”

Scientists have believed that the moon’s surface has patches of water ice in its shadowy regions since the 1990s, when NASA’s Lunar Prospector probe discovered traces of hydrogen. Lunar researchers have theorized that there are ice deposits still located in craters at the moon’s poles, which are permanently in shadow. However, according to the new study published in the journal Nature, when Siegler and his colleagues took a closer look at the poles they couldn’t find any traces of water ice. Because the ice should have accumulated over billions of years, Siegler suspects that some of the craters were at one time exposed to sunlight, Loren Grush reports for The Verge.

“The ice is like a vampire; as soon as it gets hit by sunlight, it poofs into smoke,” Siegler tells Grush.

Meanwhile, Siegler and his team noticed that the water ice at the moon’s modern poles appears to trail off in mirroring directions. Also, Siegler found that each pole had a hydrogen-rich region a short distance away, which could mark the moon’s original, or “paleopoles.” By calculating the geologic changes that it would take to shift the moon’s axis, Siegler pinpointed the shift to a part of the moon called the Procellarum region; the center of almost all of the moon’s volcanic activity, Cooper reports.

“It takes a huge change in the mass of the Moon to do that—something like a giant crater or volcano forming,” Siegler tells Cooper.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Earth & Climate Energy & Matter

NASA data leads to rare discovery: Earth’s moon wandered off axis billions of years ago

Ancient lunar ice indicates the moon’s axis slowly shifted by 125 miles, or 6 degrees, over 1 billion years. Earth’s moon now a member of solar system’s exclusive “true polar wander” club, which includes just a handful of other planetary bodies.

A 3D cross section of the moon's INFO HERE and resulting lunar polar wander. (James Keane, U of Arizona)
A 3D cross section of the moon and resulting lunar polar wander. (James Keane, U of Arizona)

A new study published today in Nature reports discovery of a rare event — that Earth’s moon slowly moved from its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago.

Planetary scientist Matthew Siegler at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, and colleagues made the discovery while examining NASA data known to indicate lunar polar hydrogen. The hydrogen, detected by orbital instruments, is presumed to be in the form of ice hidden from the sun in craters surrounding the moon’s north and south poles. Exposure to direct sunlight causes ice to boil off into space, so this ice — perhaps billions of years old — is a very sensitive marker of the moon’s past orientation.

An odd offset of the ice from the moon’s current north and south poles was a tell-tale indicator to Siegler and prompted him to assemble a team of experts to take a closer look at the data from NASA’s Lunar Prospector and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions. Statistical analysis and modeling revealed the ice is offset at each pole by the same distance, but in exactly opposite directions.

This precise opposition indicates the moon’s axis — the imaginary pole that runs north to south through it’s middle, and around which the moon rotates — shifted at least six degrees, likely over the course of 1 billion years, said Siegler, a research assistant professor in SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

“This was such a surprising discovery. We tend to think that objects in the sky have always been the way we view them, but in this case the face that is so familiar to us — the Man on the Moon — changed,” said Siegler, who also is a scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, Ariz.

“Billions of years ago, heating within the moon’s interior caused the face we see to shift upward as the pole physically changed positions,” he said. “It would be as if Earth’s axis relocated from Antarctica to Australia. As the pole moved, the Man on the Moon turned his nose up at the Earth.”

The discovery is reported today in an article in the scientific journal Nature, “Lunar true polar wander inferred from polar hydrogen,” at this link on the Nature web site: http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature17166.

Siegler’s primary co-authors are astrophysicist Richard S. Miller, a professor at the University of Alabama Huntsville, and planetary dynamicist James T. Keane, a graduate student at the University of Arizona.

Very few planetary bodies known to permanently shift their axis
Planetary bodies settle into their axis based on their mass: A planet’s heavier spots lean it toward its equator, lighter spots toward the pole.

A new study published today in Nature reports Earth’s moon wandered off its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago. (James Keane, U of Arizona)
A new study published today in Nature reports Earth’s moon wandered off its original axis roughly 3 billion years ago. (James Keane, U of Arizona)

On the rare occasion mass shifts and causes a planet to relocate on its axis, scientists refer to the phenomenon as “true polar wander.”

Discovery of lunar polar wander gains the moon entry into an extremely exclusive club. The only other planetary bodies theorized to have permanently shifted location of their axis are Earth, Mars, Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa.

What sets the moon apart is its polar ice, which appears to effectively “paint out” the path along which its poles moved.

For more information

Matthew Siegler, lunar polar wander, nature, moon, SMU
To book a live or taped interview with Matthew Siegler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News, 214-768-7654, or email news@smu.edu.

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Moon’s axis likely started relocating about 3 billion years ago
On Earth, polar wander is believed to have happened due to movement of the continental plates. Polar wander on Mars resulted from a heavy volcanic region. The moon’s change in mass was internal — the shift of a large, single mantle “plume.” Ancient volcanic activity some 3.5 billion years ago melted a portion of the moon’s mantle, causing it to bubble up toward its surface, like goo drifting upward in a lava lamp.

“The moon has a single region of the crust, a large basaltic plain called Procellarum, where radioactive elements ended up as the moon was forming,” Siegler said. “This radioactive crust acted like an oven broiler heating the mantle below.”

Some of the material melted, forming the dark patches we see at night, which are ancient lava, he said.

“This giant blob of hot mantle was lighter than cold mantle elsewhere,” Siegler said. “This change in mass caused Procellarum — and the whole moon — to move.”

The moon likely relocated its axis starting about 3 billion years ago or more, slowly moving over the course of a billion years, Siegler said, etching a path in its ice.

Over time, the axis shifted 125 miles or 200 kilometers — about half the distance from Dallas to Houston, or equal the distance from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia.

Neutrons can indicate the presence of water or ice
Polar wander explains why the moon appears to have lost much of its ice.

Siegler compares true polar wander to holding a glass filled with water. Most planets are like a steady hand holding a glass, their axis doesn’t shift and the water stays put. A planet whose mass is changing is like a wobbly hand, causing its axis to shift and the water to spill out. Similarly, as Earth’s moon changed its axis, much of its ice ceased to be hidden from the sun and was lost.

Co-author Richard Miller mapped the moon’s remaining ice by using data from NASA’s Lunar Prospector mission, which orbited the moon from 1998 to 1999. The presence of ice is inferred by measuring the energy of neutrons emitted from the lunar surface. Instruments on NASA’s satellite, including a neutron spectrometer, measured neutrons liberated from the moon by a rain of stellar particles scientists call cosmic rays. Low energy neutrons indicate the presence of hydrogen, the dominant molecule in water and ice.

“The maps show four key features,” said Siegler and his colleagues. “First, the largest quantity of hydrogen is offset from the current rotation axis of the moon by roughly 5.5 degrees. Second, the hydrogen enhancements are of similar magnitude at both poles. Third, the asymmetric enhancements do not correlate with expectations from the current thermal or permanently shadowed environment. And lastly, and most significantly, the spatial distributions of polar hydrogen appear to be nearly antipodal.”

Lunar ice is ancient time capsule; may hold answers to deep mysteries
Siegler’s discovery opens the door to further discoveries around an even deeper question — the mystery of why there is water on the moon and on Earth. Scientific theory surrounding the formation of the solar system postulates water could not have formed much closer to the sun than Jupiter, Siegel said.

“We don’t know where the Earth’s water came from. It appears to have come from the outer solar system well after the Earth and moon formed,” he said. “Ice on other bodies, like the moon or Mercury, might give us a clue to its origin.”

The fact lunar ice correlates so well with true polar wander implies that it predates this motion, Siegler said, making the ice very ancient.

“The ice may be a time capsule from the same source that supplied the original water to Earth,” he said. “This is a record we don’t have on Earth. Earth has reworked itself so many times, there’s nothing that old left here. Ancient ice from the moon could provide answers to this deep mystery.”

Other co-authors on the scientific paper include Matthieu Laneuville, David A. Paige, Isamu Matsuyama, David J. Lawrence, Arlin Crotts and Michael J. Poston. — Margaret Allen

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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SMU 2015 research efforts broadly noted in a variety of ways for world-changing impact

SMU scientists and their research have a global reach that is frequently noted, beyond peer publications and media mentions.

By Margaret Allen
SMU News & Communications
It was a good year for SMU faculty and student research efforts. Here is a small sampling of public and published acknowledgements during 2015:

Simmons, Diego Roman, SMU, education

Hot topic merits open access
Taylor & Francis, publisher of the online journal Environmental Education Research, lifted its subscription-only requirement to meet demand for an article on how climate change is taught to middle-schoolers in California.

Co-author of the research was Diego Román, assistant professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development.

Román’s research revealed that California textbooks are teaching sixth graders that climate change is a controversial debate stemming from differing opinions, rather than a scientific conclusion based on rigorous scientific evidence.

The article, “Textbooks of doubt: Using systemic functional analysis to explore the framing of climate change in middle-school science textbooks,” published in September. The finding generated such strong interest that Taylor & Francis opened access to the article.

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Research makes the cover of Biochemistry
Drugs important in the battle against cancer were tested in a virtual lab by SMU biology professors to see how they would behave in the human cell.

A computer-generated composite image of the simulation made the Dec. 15 cover of the journal Biochemistry.

Scientific articles about discoveries from the simulation were also published in the peer review journals Biochemistry and in Pharmacology Research & Perspectives.

The researchers tested the drugs by simulating their interaction in a computer-generated model of one of the cell’s key molecular pumps — the protein P-glycoprotein, or P-gp. Outcomes of interest were then tested in the Wise-Vogel wet lab.

The ongoing research is the work of biochemists John Wise, associate professor, and Pia Vogel, professor and director of the SMU Center for Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery in Dedman College. Assisting them were a team of SMU graduate and undergraduate students.

The researchers developed the model to overcome the problem of relying on traditional static images for the structure of P-gp. The simulation makes it possible for researchers to dock nearly any drug in the protein and see how it behaves, then test those of interest in an actual lab.

To date, the researchers have run millions of compounds through the pump and have discovered some that are promising for development into pharmaceutical drugs to battle cancer.

Click here to read more about the research.

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Strong interest in research on sexual victimization
Teen girls were less likely to report being sexually victimized after learning to assertively resist unwanted sexual overtures and after practicing resistance in a realistic virtual environment, according to three professors from the SMU Department of Psychology.

The finding was reported in Behavior Therapy. The article was one of the psychology journal’s most heavily shared and mentioned articles across social media, blogs and news outlets during 2015, the publisher announced.

The study was the work of Dedman College faculty Lorelei Simpson Rowe, associate professor and Psychology Department graduate program co-director; Ernest Jouriles, professor; and Renee McDonald, SMU associate dean for research and academic affairs.

The journal’s publisher, Elsevier, temporarily has lifted its subscription requirement on the article, “Reducing Sexual Victimization Among Adolescent Girls: A Randomized Controlled Pilot Trial of My Voice, My Choice,” and has opened it to free access for three months.

Click here to read more about the research.

Consumers assume bigger price equals better quality
Even when competing firms can credibly disclose the positive attributes of their products to buyers, they may not do so.

Instead, they find it more lucrative to “signal” quality through the prices they charge, typically working on the assumption that shoppers think a high price indicates high quality. The resulting high prices hurt buyers, and may create a case for mandatory disclosure of quality through public policy.

That was a finding of the research of Dedman College’s Santanu Roy, professor, Department of Economics. Roy’s article about the research was published in February in one of the blue-ribbon journals, and the oldest, in the field, The Economic Journal.

Published by the U.K.’s Royal Economic Society, The Economic Journal is one of the founding journals of modern economics. The journal issued a media briefing about the paper, “Competition, Disclosure and Signaling,” typically reserved for academic papers of broad public interest.

The Journal of Physical Chemistry A

Chemistry research group edits special issue
Chemistry professors Dieter Cremer and Elfi Kraka, who lead SMU’s Computational and Theoretical Chemistry Group, were guest editors of a special issue of the prestigious Journal of Physical Chemistry. The issue published in March.

The Computational and Theoretical research group, called CATCO for short, is a union of computational and theoretical chemistry scientists at SMU. Their focus is research in computational chemistry, educating and training graduate and undergraduate students, disseminating and explaining results of their research to the broader public, and programming computers for the calculation of molecules and molecular aggregates.

The special issue of Physical Chemistry included 40 contributions from participants of a four-day conference in Dallas in March 2014 that was hosted by CATCO. The 25th Austin Symposium drew 108 participants from 22 different countries who, combined, presented eight plenary talks, 60 lectures and about 40 posters.

CATCO presented its research with contributions from Cremer and Kraka, as well as Marek Freindorf, research assistant professor; Wenli Zou, visiting professor; Robert Kalescky, post-doctoral fellow; and graduate students Alan Humason, Thomas Sexton, Dani Setlawan and Vytor Oliveira.

There have been more than 75 graduate students and research associates working in the CATCO group, which originally was formed at the University of Cologne, Germany, before moving to SMU in 2009.

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Vertebrate paleontology recognized with proclamation
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings proclaimed Oct. 11-17, 2015 Vertebrate Paleontology week in Dallas on behalf of the Dallas City Council.

The proclamation honored the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which was jointly hosted by SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College and the Perot Museum of Science and Nature. The conference drew to Dallas some 1,200 scientists from around the world.

Making research presentations or presenting research posters were: faculty members Bonnie Jacobs, Louis Jacobs, Michael Polcyn, Neil Tabor and Dale Winkler; adjunct research assistant professor Alisa Winkler; research staff member Kurt Ferguson; post-doctoral researchers T. Scott Myers and Lauren Michael; and graduate students Matthew Clemens, John Graf, Gary Johnson and Kate Andrzejewski.

The host committee co-chairs were Anthony Fiorillo, adjunct research professor; and Louis Jacobs, professor. Committee members included Polcyn; Christopher Strganac, graduate student; Diana Vineyard, research associate; and research professor Dale Winkler.

KERA radio reporter Kat Chow filed a report from the conference, explaining to listeners the science of vertebrate paleontology, which exposes the past, present and future of life on earth by studying fossils of animals that had backbones.

SMU earthquake scientists rock scientific journal

Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)
Modelled pressure changes caused by injection and production. (Nature Communications/SMU)

Findings by the SMU earthquake team reverberated across the nation with publication of their scientific article in the prestigious British interdisciplinary journal Nature, ranked as one of the world’s most cited scientific journals.

The article reported that the SMU-led seismology team found that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of unusually frequent earthquakes occurring in the Dallas-Fort Worth area near the small community of Azle.

The research was the work of Dedman College faculty Matthew Hornbach, associate professor of geophysics; Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics; Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences; Chris Hayward, research staff and director geophysics research program; and Beatrice Magnani, associate professor of geophysics.

The article, “Causal factors for seismicity near Azle, Texas,” published online in late April. Already the article has been downloaded nearly 6,000 times, and heavily shared on both social and conventional media. The article has achieved a ranking of 270, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 144,972 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and 98th percentile of 626 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.

“It has a very high impact factor for an article of its age,” said Robert Gregory, professor and chair, SMU Earth Sciences Department.

The scientific article also was entered into the record for public hearings both at the Texas Railroad Commission and the Texas House Subcommittee on Seismic Activity.

Researchers settle long-debated heritage question of “The Ancient One”

The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)
The skull of Kennewick Man and a sculpted bust by StudioEIS based on forensic facial reconstruction by sculptor Amanda Danning. (Credit: Brittany Tatchell)

The research of Dedman College anthropologist and Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory David Meltzer played a role in settling the long-debated and highly controversial heritage of “Kennewick Man.”

Also known as “The Ancient One,” the 8,400-year-old male skeleton discovered in Washington state has been the subject of debate for nearly two decades. Argument over his ancestry has gained him notoriety in high-profile newspaper and magazine articles, as well as making him the subject of intense scholarly study.

Officially the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Kennewick Man was discovered in 1996 and radiocarbon dated to 8500 years ago.

Because of his cranial shape and size he was declared not Native American but instead ‘Caucasoid,’ implying a very different population had once been in the Americas, one that was unrelated to contemporary Native Americans.

But Native Americans long have claimed Kennewick Man as theirs and had asked for repatriation of his remains for burial according to their customs.

Meltzer, collaborating with his geneticist colleague Eske Willerslev and his team at the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen, in June reported the results of their analysis of the DNA of Kennewick in the prestigious British journal Nature in the scientific paper “The ancestry and affiliations of Kennewick Man.”

The results were announced at a news conference, settling the question based on first-ever DNA evidence: Kennewick Man is Native American.

The announcement garnered national and international media attention, and propelled a new push to return the skeleton to a coalition of Columbia Basin tribes. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced the Bring the Ancient One Home Act of 2015 and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has offered state assistance for returning the remains to Native Tribes.

Science named the Kennewick work one of its nine runners-up in the highly esteemed magazine’s annual “Breakthrough of the Year” competition.

The research article has been viewed more than 60,000 times. It has achieved a ranking of 665, which puts it in the 99th percentile of 169,466 tracked articles of a similar age in all journals, and in the 94th percentile of 958 tracked articles of a similar age in Nature.

In “Kennewick Man: coming to closure,” an article in the December issue of Antiquity, a journal of Cambridge University Press, Meltzer noted that the DNA merely confirmed what the tribes had known all along: “We are him, he is us,” said one tribal spokesman. Meltzer concludes: “We presented the DNA evidence. The tribal members gave it meaning.”

Click here to read more about the research.

Prehistoric vacuum cleaner captures singular award

Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Paleontologists Louis L. Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”

The new species, dubbed a prehistoric hoover by London’s Daily Mail online news site, was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

SMU campus hosted the world’s premier physicists

The SMU Department of Physics hosted the “23rd International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects” from April 27-May 1, 2015. Deep Inelastic Scattering is the process of probing the quantum particles that make up our universe.

As noted by the CERN Courier — the news magazine of the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, which hosts the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest science experiment — more than 250 scientists from 30 countries presented more than 200 talks on a multitude of subjects relevant to experimental and theoretical research. SMU physicists presented at the conference.

The SMU organizing committee was led by Fred Olness, professor and chair of the SMU Department of Physics in Dedman College, who also gave opening and closing remarks at the conference. The committee consisted of other SMU faculty, including Jodi Cooley, associate professor; Simon Dalley, senior lecturer; Robert Kehoe, professor; Pavel Nadolsky, associate professor, who also presented progress on experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; Randy Scalise, senior lecturer; and Stephen Sekula, associate professor.

Sekula also organized a series of short talks for the public about physics and the big questions that face us as we try to understand our universe.

Click here to read more about the research.

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Science Insider: Does North Korea really have an H-bomb?

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Science Insider, the online news site for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, quoted SMU seismologist Brian Stump, saying seismic data confirms that an earthquake in North Korea was triggered by an explosion there Jan. 5.

Richard Stone, who covers international news for Science, quoted Stump in a Jan. 6 article, “Does North Korea really have an H-bomb?”

Stump’s work in detecting ground motion from explosions has for more than 20 years proved invaluable to the United States government in ensuring that the world’s nuclear powers abide by their agreements related to underground nuclear testing. He served as scientific adviser to the U.S. delegation to the Conference on Disarmament from 1994 through 1996 and continues to be called upon frequently to assist the U.S. government in the interpretation of seismic and acoustic data.

In 2014 he was named an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow for distinguished contributions to his field, particularly in the area of seismic monitoring in support of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. Stump is Albritton Chair of Geological Sciences in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in SMU’s Dedman College.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Richard Stone
Science Insider
North Korea claims to have detonated its first hydrogen bomb yesterday. But experts are skeptical that the pariah state detonated—not an ordinary atomic device—but a much more powerful “H-bomb of justice,” as state media is now calling it. So what kind of device did the reclusive regime test? And how can nuclear jockeys make such a determination from afar?

There’s no doubt that North Korea detonated something near where it conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, and 2013. Seismic stations yesterday recorded a magnitude-5.1 earthquake with a waveform nearly identical to those registered after North Korea’s earlier tests, supporting its claim. The waveform confirms that an explosion triggered yesterday’s earthquake, says Brian Stump, a seismologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. “It could be a chemical or nuclear explosion, but because of the magnitude it is likely a nuclear explosion,” he says. Researchers are now “chewing through the waveforms” registered by seismometers in the region “to see what’s different from 2013,” says Andy Frassetto, a seismologist with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology consortium in Washington, D.C.

The estimated magnitude of yesterday’s detonation, 7 to 10 kilotons, equates to a small fission bomb. Compared to standard H-bombs, which get most of their ferocity from fusing hydrogen, that’s downright puny. The most powerful H-bomb ever tested had a yield of 50 megatons, around 2000 times more powerful than the 21-kiloton bomb dropped on Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

Read the full story.

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Live Science: The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015

Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, a North Pacific Aleutian island. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from the Aleutian island Unalaska in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science named a new species of extinct marine mammal identified by two SMU paleontologists among “The 10 Strangest Animal Discoveries of 2015.”

The new species was identified by SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist and SMU adjunct research professor Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science.

Jacobs and Fiorillo co-authored a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Their strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

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To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)

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climate change, california, textbooks, sixth grade, Diego Roman, SMU, StanfordCalifornia 6th grade science books: Climate change a matter of opinion not scientific fact

The LiveScience article published Dec. 23, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggle
Live Science
[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][ … ] It might not help clean the living room, but about 23 million years ago a hippo-size mammal used its long snout as a vacuum cleaner, suctioning up tasty morsels of marine algae and sea grass along the coast.

The newly identified extinct animal (Ounalashkastylus tomidai) belongs to the order Desmostylia, the only known order of marine mammals to go completely extinct, the researchers told Live Science in October.

The scientists found four O. tomidai skeletons, including one baby, on the Aleutian Islands’ Unalaska.

“The baby tells us they had a breeding population up there,” said study co-author Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas. “They must have stayed in sheltered areas to protect the young from surf and currents.” [ … ]

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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Dallas Morning News: Mounting evidence suggests Dallas quakes are induced by human activity

Evidence that human activity is behind the Dallas quakes includes a new analysis showing that the faults beneath Dallas and Fort Worth had been dormant for hundreds of millions of years until 2008.

SMU seismologists presented new earthquake findings at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting. (Credit: DMN)
SMU seismologists presented new earthquake findings at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting. (Credit: DMN)

Science journalist Anna Kuchment with The Dallas Morning News covered the comments of SMU seismologists Heather DeShon and Beatrice Magnani speaking during the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Calif. DeShon and Magnani presented their latest research on North Texas ground shaking.

The SMU seismology team, which includes DeShon and Magnani, published new evidence of human involvement in earthquakes in Nature Communications in April 2015. Their data showed that large volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater (brine) extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of earthquakes near Azle, Texas, from late 2013 through spring 2014.

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Book a live or taped interview with an SMU seismologist in the SMU Broadcast Studio. Call 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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The Dallas Morning News article published Dec. 16, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Anna Kuchment
The Dallas Morning News
Scientists presented new evidence this week suggesting that all five North Texas earthquake sequences, including those in Dallas, have been triggered by humans.

Until now, researchers have not commented on the cause of the Dallas-Irving quakes or the 4-magnitude quake that struck Venus, 30 miles south of Dallas, in May.

While scientists believe that high-volume injection wells may have triggered the quakes in Venus, they have not yet worked out a specific mechanism behind the Dallas and Irving quakes.

“We don’t think they’re natural,” SMU seismologist Heather DeShon told The Dallas Morning News. “But we don’t understand the subsurface physics surrounding the Irving earthquake sequence, so we’re still considering all causes.”

DeShon’s comments came during the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, where she and her colleagues presented their latest research on North Texas ground shaking. The research has not yet been independently vetted and published.

“Any discussion of causation for the Dallas-area quakes is premature, and more speculative than scientific,” said Steve Everley, a senior advisor for Energy In Depth, a program of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. “But the SMU team has helped advance our understanding of the conditions that can ultimately lead to induced seismicity, so we’re eager to see what they will publish about the seismic events near Dallas.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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North America’s newest pterosaur is a Texan — and flying reptile’s closest cousin is English

Every toothed pterosaur identified from North America’s Cretaceous has been discovered in North Texas. New species marks only the third.

A new species of toothy pterosaur is a native of Texas whose closest relative is from England.

The new 94-million-year-old species, named Cimoliopterus dunni, is strikingly similar to England’s Cimoliopterus cuvieri.

Identification of the new flying reptile links prehistoric Texas to England, says paleontologist Timothy S. Myers, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, who identified the fossil as a new species.

Pterosaur relatives from two continents suggests the prehistoric creatures moved between North America and England earlier in the Cretaceous — despite progressive widening of the North Atlantic Ocean during that time.

The Texas and English Cimoliopterus cousins are different species, so some evolutionary divergence occurred.

That indicates the populations were isolated from one another at 94 million years ago, Myers said.

The similarity between the two species, however, implies minimal divergence time, so gene flow between North American and European populations would have been possible at some point shortly before that date.

“The Atlantic opened the supercontinent Pangea like a zipper, separating continents and leaving animal populations isolated, so gene flow ceased and we start to see evolutionary divergence,” said Myers, a research assistant professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU. “Animals start to look different and you see different species on one continent versus another. Pterosaurs are a little trickier because unlike land animals they can fly and disperse across bodies of water. The later ones are pretty good flyers.”

Based on fossils discovered so far, it’s known that toothed pterosaurs are generally abundant during the Cretaceous in Asia, Europe and South America. But they are rare in North America.

The new Texas native, Cimoliopterus dunni, is only the third pterosaur species with teeth from the Cretaceous of North America. All three of the toothy Cretaceous-era pterosaurs discovered so far from North America are Texans. Nevertheless, Cimoliopterus dunni is most closely related to England’s Cimoliopterus cuvieri, said Myers.

The Cretaceous spanned about 80 million years from 145 million years ago to 66 million years ago.

Each of the Texas pterosaurs was discovered near Dallas.

Pterosaurs can cross marine barriers between emergent landmasses, effectively ‘island hopping’
Besides the new 94-million-year-old Cimoliopterus dunni, Myers in 2010 identified the 96-million-year-old Aetodactylus halli, a close cousin to Cimoliopterus. The third Texas pterosaur, 105-million-year-old Coloborhynchus wadleighi, was identified in 1994 by then-SMU student Yuong-Nam Lee. It too has an English connection: The first Coloborhynchus species ever described is from England.

“Given the small sample size, it’s odd that we have two that are so closely related to the English species,” Myers said. “It’s hard to draw any statistically significant conclusions from that, but it definitely indicates this is not a one-off, and that there was some relatively strong, significant connection. Two means a lot more than one in this case.”

Myers isn’t suggesting a land bridge. But scientists have suggested the sea level of the North Atlantic fluctuated over time.

“Pterosaurs don’t necessarily need land bridges to disperse because they can cross marine barriers between emergent landmasses, effectively ‘island hopping’ from one continental mass to another,” Myers said.

Nevertheless, identification of the new toothy Texas pterosaur deepens a mystery surrounding the flying reptiles: There still is no evidence of close ties between North American and South American pterosaur populations, he said.

“There are toothed pteranodontoids in South America — lots of individuals and lots of different species — but no close relatives to the toothed pteranodontoids in North America,” he said. “That might indicate there was some barrier to dispersal from the south. It’s unusual we don’t see a connection between these pterosaur populations. Maybe we will when we find more of this material.”

Myers reported the new species in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in “First North American occurrence of the toothed pteranodontoid pterosaur Cimoliopterus.”

A long-lived group, whether toothy and small, or toothless and big
As a group, pterosaurs, which lived alongside dinosaurs, were long-lived. They survived about 162 million years, from the Late Triassic, 228 million years ago, through the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago.

Pterosaurs were among the earliest vertebrates to steadily flap their wings to power their flying.

Early forms were toothy and had wingspans similar to a flying fox, while later they were toothless and as large as fighter jets.

Pterosaurs nested on land but their bones are often recovered from shallow marine rocks. Some species have slender, pointed teeth, suitable for a diet of fish.

“This group is very abundant around the world in the middle Cretaceous — except in North America. The only evidence we have of the toothed members comes from Texas,” Myers said. “In general we see a broad trend in pterosaurs away from teeth, so at the end of the Cretaceous all known species are toothless.”

Pterosaur hunted fish offshore from North America’s Interior Seaway
Cimoliopterus dunni likely hunted fish just off shore in the shallow Western Interior Seaway.

The prehistoric Seaway covered the central United States and Canada, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean.

Myers identified the new pterosaur from a partial upper jaw — specifically the tip of the blunt snout, or rostrum. The rostrum has sockets for 13 pair of teeth. Atop the snout is a thin, prominent crest that starts near the front and extends back. The crest is fully fused to the jaw, a good indicator the pterosaur was not a juvenile, Myers said.

“The crest is really striking,” he said. “It’s almost preserved in its entirety.”

Prolific amateur collector Brent Dunn discovered the upper jaw in January 2013 while walking the spillway of Lake Lewisville north of Dallas. The fossil, coated in reddish mud, had weathered out of the ground. The marine shale layer in which it was found is part of the Eagle Ford Group, a rock unit unique to Texas.

The fossil was found alongside ammonites and crustaceans, called index fossils, because they date the shale layer. Ammonites also indicate an open marine environment, with no fresh water influence.

Although Cimoliopterus dunni would have been large, it was mid-sized as pterosaurs go, with a wingspan of about 6 feet.

“It wouldn’t have been small and cute,” Myers said. “You would have thought twice about approaching it.”

It’s fortunate to have the beautifully preserved fossil because the potential for preserving pterosaur bones is low, Myers said. Their bones were light and hollow, filled with vacuities to help them fly, so they tend to crush easily and break into pieces. “So their normal cylindrical bone is pancaked flat,” he said.

Dunn, a long-time member of the Dallas Paleontological Society, donated it to SMU’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology. He died in 2013. Myers named the fossil for Dunn. — Margaret Allen, SMU

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KRBD FM: Local artist illustrates newly identified species

Ray Troll holds a Desmostylus tooth. (Leila Kheiry)
Ray Troll holds a Desmostylus tooth. (Leila Kheiry)

KRBD Radio reporter Leila Kheiry covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Jacobs and Fiorillo are co-authors of a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

The KRBD coverage was included in a piece about Ketchikan artist Ray Troll, who contributed illustrations of the new species.

Troll is the artist who has most illustrated desmostylians, prompting Jacobs to dub a “group” of desmostylians a “troll.” KRBD is the Ketchikan FM community radio covering southern southeast Alaska.

[/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”]

Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, a North Pacific Aleutian island. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from the Aleutian island Unalaska in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said. The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

Jacobs and Fiorillo reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The KRBD story aired Oct. 21, 2015.

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Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Leila Kheiry
KRBD Radio
Paleontologists recently announced the discovery of a new species of prehistoric marine mammal, found in Unalaska. While the fossils were discovered many years ago, the announcement in early October that they were of a separate species was new information.

Ketchikan artistand self-described paleo-nerd Ray Troll had an inside line on the story, and contributed illustrations of the new species for the scientists.

Ray Troll has made a name for himself among the nerdy set with his scientifically accurate paintings, most often depicting fish and, more recently, extinct creatures known only by the fossils they’ve left behind.

Troll arrived at the station carrying a fossil that someone gave him many years ago in Oregon. Troll said that person thought it was a fossilized tooth from an ancient horse.

“Twenty-some years later, I start getting interested in this animal, and I was literally sitting there, googling Desmostylus tooth, looking at them on eBay, and I looked over and said, ‘I’ve got one! That’s what that is! It’s not a horse tooth!’”

The tooth is an odd-shaped square, a little more than an inch on each side. It’s made up of columns, each about the width of a pencil, and one edge of the tooth is worn smooth. Troll said Desmostylia’s name comes from its unusual dental development.

“Desmo means a bundle, it’s Latin for bundle. Stylus means a pillar,” he said. “So, it’s a bundle of pillars. It looks like a little six-pack.”

Desmostylia lived for about 23 million years, and then just died out, leaving behind its fossils.

“They’re found in the Pacific. The north Pacific, to be specific. Ba-dum-bump,” Troll said. “They range from the tip of Baha all the way over to Japan.”

Troll said he became interested in Desmos through his friend, Kirk Johnson, who worked with Troll on a book, “Cruisin’ the Fossil Freeway.”

Johnson was the connection between Troll and Dr. Louis Jacobs, a Texas paleontologist and one of the researchers who determined that the Unalaska fossils were a previously unidentified species.

Jacobs said he had been at the Smithsonian, looking at Desmostylian skeletons, and was about to leave for the day.

“And then, there was the Director of the National Museum of Natural History, Kirk Johnson, coming in,” Jacobs said. “We shook hands and said hello, and he asked me what I was doing. I told him, looking as Desmostylians. He said, ‘I love Desmostylians!’ he said, ‘Ray Troll and I are working on those things now, because we’re doing another book.’”

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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KERA: Thousands Of Vertebrate Paleontologists Descend On Dallas

SMU faculty and students presented research and led field trips for various sessions of the 2015 annual meeting in Dallas of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Reporting for KERA News, North Texas’ public media news source, journalist Kat Chow covered the 2015 annual meeting in Dallas in October of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The meeting was hosted locally by the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU and the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. SMU faculty and students presented research and led field trips for various SVP sessions.

Chow’s coverage also covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

He carried out the study with paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Jacobs and Fiorillo are co-authors of a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said. The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The KERA article aired and published Oct. 14, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Kat Chow
KERA News
Everything I knew about paleontology conferences, I learned from TV and “Friends.” There was that time Ross and his girlfriend were prepping for a conference in Barbados.

“By using CT scans and computer imaging, we can in a very real way bring the Mesozoic era into the 21st century,” Ross says.

In the real world, at the conference put on by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the lingo isn’t so simple. Here are some of the session titles:

“A new large non-pterodactyloid pterosaur from a late-Jurassic interdunal desert environment with a neo-eolian nugget sandstone of Northeastern Utah.”

“The hemodynamics of vascular retia: Testing a hypothesis of blood pressure regulation through the artiodactyl carotid rete.”

“The effects of substrate, body position, and plasticity on the morphology of ruminant unguals.”

Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University, and Anthony Fiorillo, a paleontologist at Dallas’ Perot Museum, are helping organize the conference. Walking with them is like trailing a rock star — they’re inundated with fans and well-wishers.

”We specialize in animals with backbones, and how they’re preserved in the rocks, and what they mean, and what they tell us about the earth got to be the way it is,” Jacobs explains.

Read the full story.

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Alaska Dispatch News: Giant extinct mammal identified from Unalaska fossils

Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, a North Pacific Aleutian island. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from the Aleutian island Unalaska in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Alaska news reporter Mike Dunham with the Alaska Dispatch News covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Jacobs and Fiorillo are co-authors of a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago. Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said. The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

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To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)

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The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The article published Oct. 7, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Mike Dunham
Alaska Dispatch News
It had the face of a walrus, swam like a polar bear, was as big as a hippopotamus and sucked its food off the rocks and mud around the Aleutian Islands 23 million years ago. “Ounalashkastylus tomidai” was described by a team of paleontologists from Texas, Canada and Japan in an article published in the scientific journal Historical Biology on Oct. 1.

Louis L. Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and co-author of the study, said in a press release the extinct marine mammal was a vegetarian with a long snout and tusks. It grazed on plants growing along the shoreline, rooting them out then sucking them in like a vacuum cleaner. It was a style of eating not found in any other animal.

The new species, a member of the order Desmostylia (des-mo-STILL-ee-uh), was identified from four specimens found on Unalaska over a period of years beginning in 1950, when fossils were discovered in a quarry. More emerged during excavations for the foundation of Eagle View Elementary School, said Alaska artist Ray Troll, an avid follower of paleontology and illustrator of extinct animals.

Anthony Fiorillo of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, another co-author of the study, told Alaska Dispatch News the find involved a good deal of serendipity. Fiorillo, who has made several important paleontological discoveries in Alaska, had planned to work in the Yukon-Charlie area in 2004, but wildfires and smoke made that impossible.

“I looked at the weather map, and the only place I could find that wasn’t affected was Unalaska,” he said. So he switched his destination. While there he gave a talk at the Museum of the Aleutians, where he learned about the fossils. They were being kept at the headquarters of the local Native corporation. “The Unalaska museum facilitated the loan of the fossils to the Perot Museum where we could study them. Louis Jacobs was with me, so it made sense for us to work on it together.”

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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HuffPo: This Hippo-Sized Prehistoric Beast Ate Like A Vacuum Cleaner

Apparently, chewing is just slowing us all down.

Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, a North Pacific Aleutian island. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from the Aleutian island Unalaska in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Jacqueline Howard, associate science editor for The Huffington Post, covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Jacobs and Fiorillo are co-authors of a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago.

Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

Book a live interview

Angola-Jul-2010-Jacobs-%28102%29.jpg

To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)

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The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The article published Oct. 7, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Jacqueline Howard
The Huffington Post
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown creature — and it ate in a unique way that hasn’t been seen before.

The extinct species, which belonged to a group of aquatic mammals called Desmostylia that lived across the North Pacific some 23 million years ago, hoovered up vegetation like some sort of beastly vacuum cleaner, according to a study published last week in the journal Historical Biology.

“The new animal — when compared to one of a different species from Japan — made us realize that desmos do not chew like any other animal,” Dr. Louis Jacobs, professor of paleontology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a co-author of the study, said in a written statement. “They clench their teeth, root up plants and suck them in.”

The researchers concluded that the species, which was dubbed Ounalashkastylus tomidai, might have braced its lower jaw and teeth against the upper jaw and used its powerful muscles to suck up vegetation.

Fossilized bones of the species were recently found on the island of Unalaska in the North Pacific, where the Discovery Channel show “Deadliest Catch” is filmed. The fossils were shipped to the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas for the researchers to examine — and after taking a close look, the scientists realized the fossils represented a previously unknown animal.

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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LiveScience: Extinct Hippo-like Creature Was Prehistoric Vacuum Cleaner

Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from Unalaska, a North Pacific Aleutian island. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)
Paleontologists Louis Jacobs, SMU, and Anthony Fiorillo, Perot Museum, have identified a new species of marine mammal from bones recovered from the Aleutian island Unalaska in the North Pacific. (Hillsman Jackson, SMU)

Science writer Laura Geggel with Live Science covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, and paleontologist Anthony Fiorillo, vice president of research and collections and chief curator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, Dallas, and an adjunct research professor at SMU.

Jacobs and Fiorillo are co-authors of a study about the identification of new fossils from the oddball creature Desmostylia, discovered in the same waters where the popular “Deadliest Catch” TV show is filmed. The hippo-like creature ate like a vacuum cleaner and is a new genus and species of the only order of marine mammals ever to go extinct — surviving a mere 23 million years.

Desmostylians, every single species combined, lived in an interval between 33 million and 10 million years ago.

Its strange columnar teeth and odd style of eating don’t occur in any other animal, Jacobs said.

The new specimens — from at least four individuals — were recovered from Unalaska, an Aleutian island in the North Pacific.

Book a live interview

Angola-Jul-2010-Jacobs-%28102%29.jpg

To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)

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The authors reported their discovery in a special volume of the international paleobiology journal, Historical Biology. The article published online Oct.1 at http://bit.ly/1PQAHZJ.

The article published Oct. 7, 2015.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Laura Geggel
Live Science
About 23 million years ago, an ancient hippo-size mammal used its long snout like a vacuum cleaner, suctioning up food from the heavily vegetated shoreline whenever it was hungry, a new study finds.

Fossils of the newfound species — found on the Aleutian Islands’ Unalaska, the location of the popular reality TV show “Deadliest Catch” — show that it had a long snout and tusks. Its unique tooth and jaw structure indicates it was a vegetarian, said study co-author Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas.

“They were marine mammals, but they were not completely marine, like whales,” Jacobs said in a video about his research. It’s likely they lived both on land and in water, like seals, and could move around on land like a “big, lumbering, clumsy sort of giant sloth,” he said.

“But when they were in the water, they swam like polar bears,” Jacobs said. “They were front-limb-powered swimmers.”

Researchers named the new species Ounalashkastylus tomidai. The word Ounalashka translates to “near the peninsula” in the Aleut language of the indigenous Aleutian Island people, and stylus is Latin for “column,” a reference to the creatures’ column-shaped teeth. The species name tomidai honors the Japanese vertebrate paleontologist Yukimitsu Tomida.

Read the full story.

Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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SMU conference promotes technology, economics of geothermal production in oil and gas fields

“Power Plays” workshop, in Dallas May 19-20, is SMU Geothermal Laboratory’s seventh international energy conference and workshop

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To book a live or taped interview with Maria Richards in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

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Southern Methodist University’s renowned SMU Geothermal Laboratory will host its seventh international energy conference and workshop on the SMU campus May 19-20. The conference is designed to promote transition of oil and gas fields to electricity-producing geothermal systems by harnessing waste heat and fluids from both active and abandoned fields.

More than 200 professionals – ranging from members of the oil and gas service industry, reservoir engineers, to geothermal energy entrepreneurs, to lawyers – are expected to attend “SMU Power Plays: Geothermal Energy in Oil and Gas Fields” Topics of discussion will include:

  • Power generation from flare gas
  • Power generation from waste-heat and geothermal fluids
  • Research updates on induced seismicity, as well as onshore and offshore thermal maturation
  • Play Fairway Analysis – a subsurface mapping technique used to identify prospective geothermal resources
  • Technology updates

    • Researchers from SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences will present results from their Fall 2014 Eastern North American Margin Community Seismic Experiment (ENAM CSE) research. In addition, equipment such as one-well systems, desalination and other new technologies will be explored. SMU geothermal conference remains open and walk-up attendees will be accommodated.

    SMU has been at the forefront of geothermal energy research for more than 45 years, and the Geothermal Laboratory’s mapping of North American geothermal resources is considered the baseline for U.S. geothermal energy exploration. Geothermal Laboratory Coordinator Maria Richards and Emeritus Professor David Blackwell have seen interest in geothermal energy wax and wane with the price of oil and natural gas.

    But Richards believes current low oil prices will drive more interest in geothermal development, encouraging oil and gas producers to use geothermal production from existing oil and gas fields as they try to keep them cost-effective for petroleum production at 2015 prices.

    The technology that will be examined at the conference is relatively straight-forward: Sedimentary basins drilled for oil and gas production leave behind reservoir pathways that can later be used for heat extraction. Fluids moving through those hot reservoir pathways capture heat, which at the surface can be turned into electricity, or used downhole to replace pumping needs. In addition, the existing surface equipment used in active oil and gas fields generates heat, which also can be tapped to produce electricity and mitigate the cost of production.

    “Oil and gas drilling rig counts are down,” Richards said. “The industry has tightened its work force and honed its expertise. The opportunity to produce a new revenue stream during an economically challenging period, through the addition of relatively simple technology at the wellhead, may be the best chance we’ve had in years to gain operators’ attention.”

    Featured speakers include Jim Wicklund, managing director for equity research at Credit Suisse, who will speak on “Volatile Economics in the Oil Field,” and Holly Thomas and Tim Reinhardt from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office. STW Water Process & Technology, a water reclamation and oilfield services company, will have desalination equipment on-site for attendees to understand size and scaling capacity of water purification for oil field operators.

    Information and registration is available at www.smu.edu/geothermal. — Kimberly Cobb

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

    SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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    SMU seismology team to cooperate with state, federal scientists in study of May 7 Venus, Texas earthquake

    Scientists had been observing smaller quakes in area; SMU seismology team has developed expertise to deploy instruments, analyze and sharedata

    hl1-irving-earthquake-e1430691958311

    SMU’s seismology team was not surprised by the magnitude 4.0 earthquake that occurred near Venus, Texas, Thursday evening, having been aware of multiple smaller earthquakes identified by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in the area in recent months. They are recommending a regional monitoring network.

    “We emphasized to the House Committee on Energy Resources the need for a permanent regional network, supplemented by portable instruments, that we can deploy in a time-sensitive manner when earthquakes occur,” said Matthew Hornbach, SMU associate professor of geophysics.

    “The seismology team at SMU has developed the expertise to deploy these instruments, analyze and share that data,” said Brian Stump, SMU Albritton Chair of Geological Sciences. “We are committed to cooperate, as resources allow, with both state and federal agencies in addressing these issues,” Stump said.

    Currently SMU has 26 seismic instruments deployed in North Texas, split between an area near Azle, Texas, SMU, earthquakes, seismology that experienced a series of earthquakes from late 2013 through spring 2014, and along a fault straddling the Irving-Dallas, Texas, earthquakes, SMU, seismology line where earthquakes have been occurring near the site of the old Texas Stadium.

    “We are in the process of determining what resources might be available so that we can respond to the largest earthquake now felt in North Texas,” said Heather DeShon, SMU associate professor of geophysics. Previous SMU deployments have relied heavily on loaned monitoring equipment from the USGS and the academic consortium known as IRIS – Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. “We are still in the process of determining how many instruments might be available for this purpose in light of ongoing earthquake activity around the world, such as the recent earthquake in Nepal,” DeShon said.

    The magnitude 4.0 earthquake (M4) recorded by the USGS in Venus at 5:58 p.m. Thursday is part of a series of smaller earthquakes the SMU team has been following in the Midlothian area. The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) has reported seven earthquakes within 10 kilometers of the USGS location for the May 7 Venus earthquake, with three of them (including the most recent) occurring at or above magnitude 3. There have been 23 earthquakes recorded within 20 kilometers of the Venus location, since 2009, with five of them registering higher than an M3.

    SMU first started studying earthquakes in Johnson County for a series of earthquakes occurring in Cleburne in 2009, culminating in the peer reviewed “Analysis of the Cleburne, Texas, Earthquake Sequence from June 2009 to June 2010 (doi: 10.1785/0120120336 Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America October 2013). The SMU team also is watching with interest an additional area of seismicity (based on USGS locations) near Mineral Wells.

    “I don’t think any of us was surprised by Thursday’s event,” DeShon said. “There have been a series of magnitude 3 and greater earthquakes in the Johnson County area. If you have movement on a fault and change the stresses, you increase the likelihood of additional earthquakes. In other words, one earthquake frequently leads to another.”

    The SMU team noted that the USGS web site for the event contains an analysis of the data that estimates fault motion striking from the northeast to the southwest – consistent with other earthquake sequences SMU has studied in North Texas.

    “This illustrates that we all need to think about the possibility of larger earthquakes in the region where we live,” Stump said. — Kimberly Cobb

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    James Brooks awarded high honor from American Association of Petroleum Geologists

    Huffington Department of Earth Sciences Professor Emeritus Brooks receives the AAPG’s Presidential Award for Exemplary Service

    James Brooks, vice chair of the board of trustees for the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.
    James Brooks, vice chair of the board of trustees for the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

    James E. Brooks, provost emeritus and professor emeritus in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU, has been recognized with one of the highest honors of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, AAPG.

    Brooks has received the 2015 AAPG Presidential Award for Exemplary Service.

    AAPG President Randi Martinsen bestowed the honor upon Brooks “for a lifetime of inspired and dedicated service to his profession and community, and for the education of hundreds of students for whom he has served as an outstanding teacher, wise mentor and genuine friend.”

    The SMU AAPG Student Chapter presented Brooks with the AAPG Presidential Award for Exemplary Service at a ceremony May 4, 2015 in Heroy Hall on the SMU campus.

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    “Uncharacteristically, I have not prepared extensive remarks,” said Brooks, drawing laughter from the students, colleagues, family and friends on hand to celebrate with him. “I’m very, very appreciative. If you’ve spent your life in teaching, there’s something special about being appreciated by your students.”

    Brooks reminded those gathered for the reception, “If you have any untoward stories about the honoree, just keep ’em to yourself.”

    AAPG is the premier organization for U.S. petroleum geologists. It is one of the world’s largest professional geological societies with more than 36,000 members.

    “You can’t help but be considerably humbled,” Brooks said of the award. “AAPG is a big, important organization on a worldwide basis. It only gives out one of these a year. Whether I merited it or not, I do appreciate it.”

    An AAPG member, Brooks is an expert in North American and Middle Eastern stratigraphy and geomorphology. He’s been at SMU for 60 years as a professor, department chair, dean of the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, university provost, interim University president and as chairman of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man (ISEM) in SMU’s Department of Earth Sciences.

    Brooks was 26 when he started on the faculty at SMU, and ended staying his entire career.

    “There was more opportunity and more fun here than at other jobs,” Brooks said. “This was a place you could make things happen. The University wasn’t locked into a set pattern. You had an opportunity to shape the future.”

    Officially retired, he remains on the department staff in various roles, including as president emeritus and vice chair of the board of trustees for ISEM.

    “He is a beloved teacher, mentor, role model, counselor and principal professor of dozens of M.S. theses and Ph.D. dissertations,” said former AAPG President James Gibbs. “He has been very supportive of petroleum geology science and business.”

    In announcing the award, the AAPG commended Brooks — an AAPG member — for his inspired and dedicated service to his profession, community and students.

    “I’ve known Jim for 40 years, and he is a man whose character, accomplishments and modesty I greatly admire,” said past AAPG president Marlan W. Downey.

    “An extraordinary number of distinguished people have passed under Jim’s wings at SMU and ISEM in Dallas and have been influenced by him,” Downey said. “Jim is one of the ‘good guys.’”

    Among the many awards recognizing Brooks for his service to the field of geology, in 1966 he was named a Fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Fellows are cited for distinguished contributions to their field that advance science or its application. AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon members by their peers. — AAPG and SMU

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

    SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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    WFAA 8 ABC: Geologists release details of Azle earthquakes study

    Injecting fluids into the ground or extracting them has long been known to cause quakes, but rarely — if ever — have the two been caught acting in concert.

    Book a live interview

    earthquake monitoring

    Book a live or taped interview with an SMU seismologist in the SMU Broadcast Studio. Call 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.

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    WFAA 8 ABC news reporter Byron Harris reported on the SMU-led team of seismologists whose recent study found that large volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater (brine) extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of earthquakes near Azle, Texas, from late 2013 through spring 2014.

    The study published in Nature Communications.

    WFAA aired their segment, Geologists release details of Azle earthquakes study, April, 21, 2015.

    Read the full story.

    EXCERPT:

    By Byron Harris
    WFAA 8 ABC
    The seismology team led by SMU that has been researching local earthquakes believes it’s found a cause for the ones that hit Azle a couple of years ago.

    “Causal Factors for Seismicity near Azle, Texas” was published in Nature Communications. A press release about the findings of the study was released on Tuesday.

    It states that the team at SMU found “high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater (brine) extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of earthquakes.”

    Oil and gas drilling takes water out of the ground as a product of energy production. And that water is pumped back into the ground in wastewater injection wells. SMU geologists measured those activities, centered around the Newark East Gas Field north and east of Azle.

    They found 70 energy-producing wells in the field, and two adjacent wastewater injection wells. Increased levels of water injection and withdrawal corresponded with the earthquakes, the report says.

    The quakes hit Azle between late 2013 and spring of 2014. The town saw seven quakes of magnitude 3.0 or higher in that period. A 3D model was developed to investigate two intersecting faults and estimate stress changes.

    Read the full story.

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

    SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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    Dallas Morning News: Azle earthquakes likely caused by oil and gas operations, study says

    Injecting fluids into the ground or extracting them has long been known to cause quakes, but rarely — if ever — have the two been caught acting in concert.

    A sign marks the entrance to an EnerVest wellsite in Parker County. SMU researchers detemined that an EnerVest wastewater well was one of two such sites exerting the greatest pressure on the fault where earthquakes occurred starting in November 2013. Workers buried about 120 million gallons of fluid at the site between October 2010 and September 2013. (DMN)
    A sign marks the entrance to an EnerVest wellsite in Parker County. SMU researchers detemined that an EnerVest wastewater well was one of two such sites exerting the greatest pressure on the fault where earthquakes occurred starting in November 2013. Workers buried about 120 million gallons of fluid at the site between October 2010 and September 2013. (DMN)

    Science journalist Anna Kuchment with The Dallas Morning News covered the research of an SMU-led team of seismologists whose recent study found that large volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater (brine) extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of earthquakes near Azle, Texas, from late 2013 through spring 2014.

    The study published in Nature Communications.

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    The Dallas Morning News article published April, 21, 2015.

    Read the full story.

    EXCERPT:

    By Anna Kuchment
    The Dallas Morning News
    Oil and gas operations are the most likely cause of dozens of earthquakes that began rattling the North Texas towns of Azle and Reno in November 2013, a group of scientists has concluded.

    The study, led by researchers at SMU and published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, presents some of the most conclusive evidence yet that humans are shifting faults below Dallas-Fort Worth that have not budged in hundreds of millions of years.

    While experts have not yet determined what’s causing the shaking in Dallas and Irving, the new paper previews aspects of that study and includes suggestions that will help speed research.

    “It’s certainly one of the best cases in the literature,” said Art McGarr of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earthquake Hazards Program in Menlo Park, Calif.

    The new findings contradict statements by the Railroad Commission of Texas that there are no definitive links between oil and gas activity and earthquakes in the state.

    Shown an embargoed version of the paper, the commission’s staff seismologist Craig Pearson wrote in a statement that “the study raises many questions with regard to its methodology, the information used and conclusions it reaches.” But he declined to answer specific questions before meeting with the paper’s authors. The Railroad Commission regulates the oil and gas industry.

    The Azle study is the result of a yearlong collaboration involving 11 researchers at SMU, the University of Texas at Austin, and the U.S. Geological Survey and was reviewed by independent experts before publication.

    The scientists zeroed in on an unusual mechanism behind the quakes: workers pushing liquid into the ground on one side of a fault and sucking gas and groundwater from the other side of the fault.

    “The combination of these activities seems to have triggered the earthquakes, and that was a real surprise to us,” said Matthew Hornbach, a geophysicist at SMU and a lead author of the paper.

    Injecting fluids into the ground or extracting them has long been known to cause quakes, but rarely — if ever — have the two been caught acting in concert.

    The geology of each region is unique, however, so these mechanisms may not be at work elsewhere.

    Read the full story.

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

    SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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    Most likely cause of 2013-14 earthquakes: Combination of gas field fluid injection, removal

    SMU-led seismology team reveals Azle findings for an area where the seismology team identified two intersecting faults

    Natural and anthropogenic stress changes that may trigger earthquakes in the Azle area. (SMU)
    Natural and man-made stress changes that may trigger earthquakes in the Azle area. (SMU)

    An SMU-led seismology team finds that high volumes of wastewater injection combined with saltwater (brine) extraction from natural gas wells is the most likely cause of earthquakes occurring near Azle, Texas, from late 2013 through spring 2014.

    In an area where the seismology team identified two intersecting faults, they developed a sophisticated 3D model to assess the changing fluid pressure within the rock formation. They used the model to estimate stress changes induced in the area by two wastewater injection wells and the more than 70 production wells that remove both natural gas and significant volumes of salty water known as brine.

    Conclusions from the modeling study integrate a broad-range of estimates for uncertain subsurface conditions. Ultimately, better information on fluid volumes, flow parameters, and subsurface pressures in the region will provide more accurate estimates of the fluid pressure along this fault.

    “The model shows that a pressure differential develops along one of the faults as a combined result of high fluid injection rates to the west and high water removal rates to the east,” said Matthew Hornbach, SMU associate professor of geophysics. “When we ran the model over a 10-year period through a wide range of parameters, it predicted pressure changes significant enough to trigger earthquakes on faults that are already stressed.”

    Modelled pressure changes in the Ellenburger caused by injection and production.
    Modelled pressure changes in the Ellenburger caused by injection and production. The images show the system prior to injection (a) through the onset of seismicity (e). Note that the most significant amount of brine removal occurs along the fault trend.

    Model-predicted stress changes on the fault were typically tens to thousands of times larger than stress changes associated with water level fluctuations caused by the recent Texas drought.

    “What we refer to as induced seismicity – earthquakes caused by something other than strictly natural forces – is often associated with subsurface pressure changes,” said Heather DeShon, SMU associate professor of geophysics. “We can rule out stress changes induced by local water table changes. While some uncertainties remain, it is unlikely that natural increases to tectonic stresses led to these events.”

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    Surprisingly small changes in stress can reactivate certain faults
    DeShon explained that some ancient faults in the region are more susceptible to movement – “near critically stressed” – due to their orientation and direction. “In other words, surprisingly small changes in stress can reactivate certain faults in the region and cause earthquakes,” DeShon said.

    The study, “Causal Factors for Seismicity near Azle, Texas,” has been published in the journal Nature Communications. The study was produced by a team of scientists from SMU’s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics and the University of Texas Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. SMU scientists Hornbach and DeShon are the lead authors.

    Fluid pressure modeling of industry activity and water table fluctuations is first of its kind
    SMU seismologists have been studying earthquakes in North Texas since 2008, when the first series of felt tremors hit near DFW International Airport between Oct. 30, 2008, and May 16, 2009. Next came a series of quakes in Cleburne between June 2009 and June 2010, and this third series in the Azle-Reno area northwest of Fort Worth occurred between Nov. 2013 and Jan. 2014. The SMU team also is studying an ongoing series of earthquakes in the Irving-Dallas area that began in April 2014.

    In both the DFW sequence and the Cleburne sequence, the operation of injection wells used in the disposal of natural gas production fluids was listed as a possible cause of the seismicity. The introduction of fluid pressure modeling of both industry activity and water table fluctuations in the Azle study represents the first of its kind, and has allowed the SMU team to move beyond assessment of possible causes to the most likely cause identified in this report.

    Prior to the DFW Airport earthquakes in 2008, an earthquake large enough to be felt had not been reported in the Fort Worth Basin since 1950. The North Texas earthquakes of the last seven years have all occurred in areas developed for natural gas extraction from a geologic formation known as the Barnett Shale. The Texas Railroad Commission reports that production in the Barnett Shale grew exponentially from 216 million cubic feet a day in 2000, to 4.4 billion cubic feet a day in 2008, to a peak of 5.74 billion cubic feet of gas a day in 2012.

    Read the report here.

    While the SMU Azle study adds to the growing body of evidence connecting some injection wells and, to a lesser extent, some oil and gas production to induced earthquakes, SMU’s team notes that there are many thousands of injection and/or production wells that are not associated with earthquakes.

    The area of study addressed in the report is in the Newark East Gas Field (NEGF), north and east of Azle. In this field, hydraulic fracturing is applied to loosen and extract gas trapped in the Barnett Shale, a sedimentary rock formation formed approximately 350 million years ago. The report explains that along with natural gas, production wells in the Azle area of the NEGF can also bring to the surface significant volumes of water from the highly permeable Ellenburger Formation – both naturally occurring brine as well as fluids that were introduced during the fracking process.

    Subsurface fluid pressures are known to play a key role in causing seismicity. A primer produced by the U.S. Department of Energy explains the interplay of fluids and faults:

    The fluid pressure in the pores and fractures of the rocks is called the ‘pore pressure.’ The pore pressure acts against the weight of the rock and the forces holding the rock together (stresses due to tectonic forces). If the pore pressures are low (especially compared to the forces holding the rock together), then only the imbalance of natural in situ earth stresses will cause an occasional earthquake. If, however, pore pressures increase, then it would take less of an imbalance of in situ stresses to cause an earthquake, thus accelerating earthquake activity. This type of failure…is called shear failure.

    Injecting fluids into the subsurface is one way of increasing the pore pressure and causing faults and fractures to “fail” more easily, thus inducing an earthquake, he said. Thus, induced seismicity can be caused by injecting fluid into the subsurface or by extracting fluids at a rate that causes subsidence and/or slippage along planes of weakness in the earth.

    All seismic waveform data used in the compilation of the report are publically available at the IRIS Data Management Center. Wastewater injection, brine production and surface injection pressure data are publicly available at the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC). Craig Pearson at the TRC, Bob Patterson from the Upper Trinity Groundwater Conservation District; scientists at XTO Energy, ExxonMobil, MorningStar Partners and EnerVest provided valuable discussions and, in some instances, data used in the completion of the report.

    “This report points to the need for even more study in connection with earthquakes in North Texas,” said Brian Stump, SMU’s Albritton Chair in Earth Sciences. “Industry is an important source for key data, and the scope of the research needed to understand these earthquakes requires government support at multiple levels.” — Kimberly Cobb

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

    SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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    Smithsonian: Take a Deep Dive Into The Reasons Land Animals Moved to the Seas

    Synthesizing decades of discoveries, scientists have revealed links between changing environments and animal movements

    karen carr, Louis Jacobs, Smithsonian, tetrapods, SMU

    Smithsonian magazine online tapped the expertise of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

    Science journalist Alicia Ault interviewed Jacobs on the subject of why land animals moved to the seas over the past 250 million years. The article, “Take a deep dive into the reasons land animals moved to the seas,” delves into a new scientific paper published by two Smithsonian scientists and appearing in the latest issue of the highly ranked prestigious journal Science.

    Jacobs is a world-recognized vertebrate paleontologist and has served as president of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. He leads SMU’s Institute for the Study of Earth and Man.

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    Currently his field research is focused on Angola in southwestern Africa. He co-leads Projecto PaleoAngola, a collaborative international scientific research program to understand the effect of the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean on ancient life. In the laboratory, Jacobs’ research utilizes advanced imaging and stable isotope techniques to investigate paleoenvironmental, biogeographic and phylogenetic issues of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras.

    Jacobs serves on the National Park Service Science Committee Advisory Board, which recommends National Natural Landmarks to the U.S. Department of the Interior. He has served as president of the international Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, and in 1999 he was director ad interim of the Dallas Museum of Natural History. Before joining SMU, he served as head of the Division of Paleontology at the National Museum of Kenya. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, a Specially Appointed Professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, and a Visiting Professor at Richard Leakey’s Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya.

    Jacobs is the author of “Quest for the African Dinosaurs: Ancient Roots of the Modern World” (Villard Books and Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2000); “Lone Star Dinosaurs” (Texas A&M U. Press, 1999), which is the basis of the Texas dinosaur exhibit at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History; “Cretaceous Airport” (ISEM, 1993); and more than 100 scientific papers and edited volumes.

    The Smithsonian article published April, 16, 2015.

    Read the full story.

    EXCERPT:

    By Alicia Ault
    Smithsonian.com
    The movement of animals from the land into the sea has happened several times over the last 250 million years, and it has been documented in many different and singular ways. But now, for the first time, a team of researchers has created an overview that not only provides insight into evolution, but may also help more accurately assess humans’ impact on the planet.

    The oceans are teeming with tetrapods—“four-legged” birds, reptiles, mammals and amphibians—that have repeatedly transitioned from the land to the sea, adapting their legs into fins. The transitions have often been correlated with mass extinctions, but the true reasons are only partly known based on fossils and through study of Earth’s climate, for instance.

    Those transitions are considered to be “canonical illustrations” of the evolutionary process and thus ideal for study; living marine tetrapods—such as whales, seals, otters and sea lions—also have a big ecological impact, according to Neil P. Kelley and Nicholas D. Pyenson, the two Smithsonian scientists who compiled the new look at these tetrapods, appearing this week in the journal Science.

    Instead of gathering evidence from a single field, the pair pulled together research from many disciplines, including paleontology, molecular biology and conservation ecology, to give a far larger picture of what was happening when animals transitioned from the land to the sea across millennia.

    Almost by necessity, scientists tend to work in narrow silos, so this research will help broaden their views and potentially make for quicker progress in understanding evolution. Knowing how these creatures adapted over the last few hundred million years, and especially how they’ve changed in the era since humans appeared, could help us become better stewards of the planet.

    “It’s a one-of-a-kind summation of all that’s known about those different groups that evolved to go back to the sea,” says Louis L. Jacobs, a professor of earth sciences and president of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University. The paper lays it all out in a way that allows scientists to make comparisons across species, he adds.

    Read the full story.

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

    SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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    NBC, CBS & CW33: Jurassic Jackpot — 5-Year-Old Finds Dinosaur in Mansfield

    The folks at SMU say a find like this is extremely rare, and for a five-year-old kid to have found it, may be more rare than the Dino itself.

    The fossil bones of a 100 million-year-old dinosaur discovered at a shopping center construction site will be studied and identified by paleontologists at Southern Methodist University’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.

    The bones were discovered by a Dallas Zoo employee and his young son. The fossils have been transported to SMU’s Shuler research museum in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

    The discovery of the bones, believed to be from the family of armored dinosaurs called nodasuaridae, was covered by local TV stations NBC Channel 5, CBS Channel 11 and Channel CW 33.

    Dale Winkler, SMU, paleontologist, dinosaur
    mike-polcyn, SMU, paleontology, Huffington

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    Angola-Jul-2010-Jacobs-%28102%29.jpg

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    The story aired April 7, 2015.

    Watch the CW 33 story.

    EXCERPT:

    By NewsFix
    Channel CW 33
    Dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes. Well, it also turns out so do Dino-diggers.

    “Over the past few years, we’ve found a lot of really amazing things, but this is by far the most awesome thing we’ve found.”

    Yeah, Dallas zoo keeper Tim Brys and his son Wiley hit the Jurassic jackpot while digging around a Mansfield shopping center development.

    Wiley, who is just five-years-old, found something 100 million years in the making.

    “He walked up here a head of me here and came back with a piece of bone. It was a pretty good size. I knew it was something interesting,” Brys said.

    That interesting thing is what SMU paleontologists call a Nodosaur, a dinosaur probably as large as a horse, covered in armored plates.

    Now this guy is headed to SMU to be examined.

    “I don’t think it has hit either one of us just how amazing this is. I know it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity a lot of people never find something like this.” Brys said.

    Watch the CW 33 story.

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

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    The Huffington Post: 4-Year-Old Boy Finds Rare 100-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones In Texas

    The SMU scientists started excavating the dinosaur bones on Friday. They speculate the bones belong to a group of dinosaurs called Nodosaurs — herbivorous creatures that lived in the late Jurassic to early Cretaceous periods.

    The fossil bones of a 100 million-year-old dinosaur discovered at a shopping center construction site will be studied and identified by paleontologists at Southern Methodist University’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.

    The bones were discovered by a Dallas Zoo employee and his young son. The fossils have been transported to SMU’s Shuler research museum in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

    The discovery of the bones, believed to be from the family of armored dinosaurs called nodasuaridae, was covered by journalist Dominique Mosbergen, reporting for The Huffington Post.

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    Dale Winkler, SMU, paleontologist, dinosaur

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    mike-polcyn, SMU, paleontology, Huffington

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    Angola-Jul-2010-Jacobs-%28102%29.jpg

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    The story was published April 8, 2015.

    Read the full story.

    EXCERPT:

    By Dominique Mosbergen
    The Huffington Post
    A 4-year-old and his dad were looking for fossils in Mansfield, Texas, when the boy made an incredible discovery. There, buried in the dirt, the child reportedly found rare, 100-million-year-old dinosaur bones.

    Last September, Tim Brys, a keeper at the Dallas Zoo, brought his son, Wiley, to the site of a future shopping center to conduct a fossil hunt, NBC News reported. The earth had been dug up to make way for the development, and Brys said he had hoped to find some fish fossils buried there.

    “We commonly go collect fossils as something we can do together to be outside. Wiley enjoys coming with me on my trips,” Brys told the news outlet.

    That day, the father and son reportedly did find some fish vertebrae at the site. But Wiley went on to make a far more astonishing discovery.

    [Wiley] walked up ahead of me and found a piece of bone,” Brys told the Dallas Morning News. “It was a pretty good size and I knew I had something interesting.”

    He was right.

    According to scientists at Southern Methodist University, Wiley had stumbled upon some rare dinosaur bones, estimated to date back 100 million years.

    Read the full story.

    Follow SMUResearch.com on twitter at @smuresearch.

    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

    SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

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    KERA: 4-Year-Old Texas Boy Finds 100-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones

    Nodosaurs are plant eating animals that are built a little like tanks with a relatively broad body with armor in their skin.

    dinosaur, anyklosaurus, nodasaur

    The fossil bones of a 100 million-year-old dinosaur discovered at a shopping center construction site will be studied and identified by paleontologists at Southern Methodist University’s Shuler Museum of Paleontology.

    The bones were discovered by a Dallas Zoo employee and his young son. The fossils have been transported to SMU’s Shuler research museum in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

    The discovery of the bones, believed to be from the family of armored dinosaurs called nodasuaridae, was covered by science journalist Lauren Silverman, reporting for KERA public radio.

    Book a live interview

    Dale Winkler, SMU, paleontologist, dinosaur

    To book a live or taped interview with Dale Winkler in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
    mike-polcyn, SMU, paleontology, Huffington

    To book a live or taped interview with Michael Polcyn in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.
    Angola-Jul-2010-Jacobs-%28102%29.jpg

    To book a live or taped interview with Louis Jacobs in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu.

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    17 million-year-old whale fossil provides 1st exact date for East Africa’s puzzling uplift17 million-year-old whale fossil provides 1st exact date for East Africa’s puzzling uplift

    The story aired April 8, 2015.

    Hear the full story.

    EXCERPT:

    By Lauren Silverman
    KERA Public Radio
    A Dallas Zookeeper went on a fossil hunt with his little boy at a construction site. And the 4-year-old picked up what turned out to be a dinosaur bone – likely 100 million years old. On Wednesday, scientists found another key bone.

    Wiley Brys and his dad Tim were digging through the dirt, just looking for some shark teeth last August when it happened.

    “My son walked ahead of me and walked back with a chunk of bone that looked like rib bone,” Brys says.

    Wylie Brys, now 5-years-old, discovered a bone in a construction site behind a Mansfield shopping center.
    Wylie Brys, now 5-years-old, discovered a bone in a construction site behind a Mansfield shopping center.

    A few inches long, it was a bit moist and a purplish gray. The bone, experts say, is likely 100-million years old.

    For a kid who still counts half birthdays, that many years is hard to imagine.

    “I don’t think he completely understands what’s going on,” Brys, a zookeeper who works with reptiles at the Dallas Zoo, says. “He’s just as interested in as playing in the dirt as the fossils I think.”

    What Brys and his kid uncovered behind a Mansfield shopping center is thought to be part of a group of dinosaurs called Nodosaurs. They’re plant eating animals that are built a little like tanks.

    “They’re these little armored, squatty-looking animals, relatively broad body with armor in their skin,” says Mike Polcyn, director of SMU’s Digital Earth Sciences Lab.

    Polcyn has been working at the dig site, preparing the bones to be moved. Just when the team thought they’d uncovered it all, Polcyn says, they unearthed the Nodosaur’s upper leg bone.

    Hear the full story.

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    SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

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    Los Angeles Times: Fossilized whale bone in African desert holds clues to human evolution

    Ancient whale swam hundreds of miles up African river and left behind clues about geology and climate change

    Paleontologist James G. Mead excavating a whale specimen in an open-pit mine in Kenya in 1964. The long-lost specimen has helped date the onset of uplift on the East African Plateau, a change that altered the local environment and shaped the evolution of human ancestors. (Courtesy of James G. Mead)
    Paleontologist James G. Mead excavating a whale specimen in an open-pit mine in Kenya in 1964. The long-lost specimen has helped date the onset of uplift on the East African Plateau, a change that altered the local environment and shaped the evolution of human ancestors. (Courtesy of James G. Mead)

    The Los Angeles Times covered the research of SMU paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences of SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences.

    Jacobs is co-author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Findings of the research provide the first constraint on the start of uplift of East African terrain from near sea level.

    Uplift associated with the Great Rift Valley of East Africa and the environmental changes it produced have puzzled scientists for decades because the timing and starting elevation have been poorly identified.

    Jacobs and his colleagues tapped a fossil from the most precisely dated beaked whale in the world — and the only stranded whale ever found so far inland on the African continent — to pinpoint for the first time a date when East Africa’s mysterious elevation began.

    The 17 million-year-old fossil is from the beaked Ziphiidae whale family. It was discovered 740 kilometers inland at a elevation of 620 meters in modern Kenya’s harsh desert region.

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    The article published March 16, 2015.

    Read the full story.

    EXCERPT:

    By Geoffrey Mohan
    Los Angeles Times
    A 22-foot beaked whale that apparently took a wrong turn up an African river about 17 million years ago may offer clues to the climate-change forces that shaped human evolution.

    Lost for more than 30 years, the fossilized beak with part of the jaw bone helps determine that the East African Plateau probably began rising no earlier than 17 million years ago, according to a study published online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    That geologic upheaval in an area known as the cradle of humankind is believed to be responsible for the gradual conversion of dense, humid forests into more sparsely treed grasslands that made upright locomotion on two feet advantageous to evolving human ancestors.

    “The whale is telling us all kinds of things,” said study coauthor Louis Jacobs, a paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “It tells us the starting point for all that uplift that changed the climate that led to humans. It’s amazing.”

    Jacobs had been searching for the specimen since 1980, when he was head of paleontology at the National Museums of Kenya. He had read about the 1964 find, by James G. Mead of the Smithsonian Institution, in a 1975 research paper.

    Every time Jacobs visited Harvard, Washington or Nairobi, he would try to find it.

    “It was protected by a plaster jacket, so you couldn’t really see it,” he said. “I suspect nobody knew what it was. It was just kept in the collections there.”

    Finally, just before another trip to Kenya in 2011, a collections official at Harvard located the fossil, sheathed in the protective jacket, Jacobs said.

    Jacobs had the specimen scanned and analyzed, then contacted Henry Wichura, a structural geologist at the University of Potsdam in Germany, who had been studying plateau region, trying to determine when it started rising. He had found evidence that rivers and lava had flowed east from high points on the plateau at least 13 million years ago.

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