We recently published a post on the Zuidwal volcano, found buried in the Netherlands and becoming a google sensation – google is still working on removing all the made-up images. But in spite of google, there is a real story behind this volcano. It is the story of the North Sea, the sea that could…
The centre of South Africa is an amazing place. The long drive from Cape Town in-land is exciting for the first two hours, while the road climbs up through the mountains, past vineyards and valleys full of fynbos. Once on the high interior plateau of South Africa, the landscape becomes dry and monotonous – and…
People mellow with age. (At least, most of us do.) The emotions of youth become less all-important and less demanding of our attention. Young people feel that every perceived slight needs addressing. The heat goes to the head and mistakes are made. Older people consider more before responding. The Earth, too, went through a youthful…
Super-eruptions are rare. That is probably a good thing, even for Tallis. Too many things can go wrong for us in a supereruption. If you need a reminder, a super-eruption is often defined as a VEI-8, erupting more than 1000 km3 of ‘stuff’, leaving a crater 20 kilometers or more in diameter. Hector has written…
Some events can cast long shadows. The UK is still talking about the storm of 1987 (‘the worst night since the Blitz’), the winter of 1963, the storm floods of 1953, the London smog of 1952, the Great Storm of 26 November 1703. Other countries have their own stories. But one event in particular still…
Much of our world is in hiding. It lies below the surface of the oceans and is largely invisible to us, a Maria Incognito. It is a hostile world: we are creatures of the solid ground, who long left the seas behind and cannot return. But more of this forbidden world is being uncovered, by…
A republication of an older post The dinosaurs would disagree. After owning the Earth, they were now in a bit of a bother. A major re-arrangement of the Earth had taken place. Pangea had split; Gondwana was broken up. The Indian ocean had formed but not in a clean way: a number of parallel rifts…
Is this the strangest egg in the world? The shell contains no egg white, yoke or embryo, nor even chocolate. No bird will ever hatch from it. Instead it is filled with a stony mineral. Which creature laid it, and what was expected to emerge from it? The only thing that comes to mind is…
Continental drift was dead. The idea had been around for a long time. Just a cursory look at a map shows the similarity between the coast lines on either side of the Atlantic ocean. They fit even more precisely when looking at the continental shelf rather than the actual coast line. Even better, the geology…
In spite of being posted on VC, the word ‘volcano’ does not appear in this post. Or at least, it wouldn’t have had I not written this preface. Which is why I wrote it, since we can not have a VC post which lacks the word ‘volcano’. (Of course now that I have mentioned ‘volcano’…