Fossil River : July 2011

An action thriller by Jock Miller

Fossil fuel has an ageless affinity with dinosaurs. To create oil, dinosaurs died.

The perfect energy storm is sweeping over the United States: Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown has paralyzed nuclear expansion globally, BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill has stalled deep water drilling, Arab oil countries are in turmoil causing doubt about access to future oil, the intensity of hurricanes hitting the Gulf’s oil rigs and refineries has intensified due to global warming, and the nation’s Strategic Oil Supply is riding on empty.

As the energy storm intensifies, the nation’s access to Arab oil, once supplying over sixty percent of our fossil fuel, is being threatened causing people to panic for lack of gas at the pumps, stranding cars across the country and inciting riots.

The U.S. Military is forced to cut back air, land, and sea operations sucking up 58% of every barrel of oil to protect the nation; U.S. commercial airlines are forced to limit flights for lack of jet fuel; and businesses are challenged to power up their factories, and offices as the U.S. Department of Energy desperately tries to provide a balance of electric power from the network of aged power plants and transmission lines that power up the nation.

The United States must find new sources of domestic fossil fuel urgently or face an energy crisis that will plunge the nation into a deep depression worse than 1929.

The energy storm is very real and happening this very moment. But, at the last moment of desperation, the United States discovers the world’s largest fossil fuel deposit found in a remote inaccessible mountain range within Alaska’s Noatak National Preserve surrounding six and a half million acres.

Preventing access to the oil is a colony of living fossil dinosaurs that will protect its territory to the death.

Nobody gets out alive; nobody can identify the predator--until Dr. Kimberly Fulton, Curator of Paleontology at New York’s Museum of Natural History, is flown into the inaccessible area by Scott Chandler, the Marine veteran helicopter pilot who’s the Park’s Manager of Wildlife. All hell breaks loose when Fulton’s teenage son and his girlfriend vanish into the Park.

Will the nation’s military be paralyzed for lack of mobility fuel, and will people across America run out of gas and be stranded, or will the U.S. Military succeed in penetrating this remote mountain range in northwestern Alaska to restore fossil fuel supplies in time to save the nation from the worst energy driven catastrophe in recorded history?

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Dinos: Becoming a Dinosaur Mummy

http://news.discovery.com

Kasey-Dee Gardner uncovers the strange phenomenon of dinosaur mummification.

What are the consequences of an oil spill to the environment? Answered by Planet Green

Planet Green

Spills reaching the shore are dangerous to wildlife. Water birds and mammals become covered in oil, which destroys feathers' water-resistance and the insulation of mammals' fur. Crude oil can poison animals as they try to lick themselves clean. It's not always possible to keep wildlife like birds, otters and walruses away from sea-based oil spills. The consequences of an oil spill linger for decades afterwards. Areas in Alaska affected by the Exxon Valdez spill are still polluted by oil that hasn't biodegraded yet.

Solar Prospecting

http://curiosity.discovery.com

Dinos: Dinosaur Mummy Has Skin, Guts

http://news.discovery.com

The most intact dinosaur mummy was unveiled to the public in 2008. Discovery News' Kasey-Dee Gardner reports.

Dinos: The Skinny on Digging For Dinos

http://news.discovery.com

Few things are as addictive as cutting through dirt hoping to unearth a fossil, as James Williams discovers.

Notable Feathered Dinosaurs:Caudipteryx

Caudipteryx (Greek for "tail feather"); pronounced caw-DIP-ter-ix
By Bob Strauss

Habitat: Lakesides and riverbeds of Asia

Historical Period:

Early Cretaceous (120-130 million years ago)

Size and Weight:

About 3 feet long and 20 pounds

Diet:

Plants

Distinguishing Characteristics:

Primitive feathers; birdlike beak and feet

About Caudipteryx:

If any single creature has conclusively settled the debate about the relationship between birds and dinosaurs, it's Caudipteryx. The fossils of this turkey-sized dinosaur reveal startlingly birdlike characteristics, including feathers, a short, beaked head, and distinctly avian feet. For all its resemblance to birds, though, paleontologists agree that Caudipteryx was unable to fly--making it an intermediate species between land-bound dinosaurs and flying birds.
However, not all scientists think that Caudipteryx proves that birds descended from dinosaurs. One school of thought maintains that this creature evolved from a species of bird that gradually lost the ability to fly (the same way penguins gradually evolved from flying ancestors). As with all dinosaurs reconstructed from fossils, it's impossible to know (at least based on the evidence we now have) exactly where Caudipteryx stood on the dinosaur/bird spectrum.

Read More

Photo: Caudipteryx (Luis Rey/www.luisrey.ndtilda.co.uk)

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Check out Bob's Dinosaur Blog !

Bob Strauss is a freelance writer and book author; one of his specialties is explaining scientific concepts and discoveries to both a lay and professional audience.

Bob Strauss is the author of two best-selling question-and-answer books that range across the expanse of science, biology, history and culture: The Big Book of What, How and Why (Main Street, 2005) and Who Knew? Hundreds & Hundreds of Questions & Answers for Curious Minds (Sterling Innovation, 2007).

Eco-friendly Removal of Oil from Soil

Analysis by Tim Wall

A Lithuanian company claims that their three stage process can remove oil from contaminated soil using only environmentally friendly chemicals, bacteria, and plants.

Oil contaminated soil comes from both accidents and industrial processes. The refining of oil often results in large amounts of highly contaminated sludge. But oil soaked into soil requires different cleaning techniques than oil spills on water.

The company Biocentras first uses a surfactant, a chemical which breaks down the chemically repellent barriers between substances. The surfactant, mixed with water, is used to wash the soil and can be used up to ten times, Biocentras reports. Afterward, the chemical breaks down into a “natural” compound, according to a press release by Eureka, a European business technology advocacy group.

The second stage uses microorganisms to break down the oil remaining in the soil.

"The bacteria used in the process lie dormant in negative temperatures, but then come to life as the temperature rises. However, some organisms can start to degrade oil at temperatures that are only a little more than is required to melt ice," said Monika Kavaliauske, manager at Biocentras, in a press release by the company. But, she added "it is much more effective in warmer climates."

Microorganisms break the oil down to a point where hardy plants can be used to further break down the oil. Using plants to clean up the environment is called “phytoremediation.”

Don't try this at home, only certain plants can take that kind of abuse. Moviegoers might remember the scene in Fight Club where members of Project Mayhem put up a billboard that says, “Did you know used motor oil can be used as fertilizer?”

It can't.

The whole process takes about one year, and leaves soil that can be used by other, less hardy plants. Biocentras has cleaned soils with up to .67 pounds (300 grams) of oil per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of soil.

So far more than 22,000 tons of soil have been cleaned using this process, mostly in Lithuania. But Biocentras hopes to expand into the Middle East, where warmer temperatures will make the process even more effective.

“We have no clients in the Middle East and are actively looking for them. There are potential applications for most of the world and we are keen to develop it further,” said Kavaliauske.

Dinosaur Tracking

http://www.smithsonianmag.com

Watch a video illustration of what scientists can learn from footprints

Video: Sarah Zielinski, Kenny Fletcher and Amanda Bensen

Gulf Turtle Nests Abound, But Worries Remain

Watch National Geographics Video Here

Sea turtle nesting season is underway on Gulf of Mexico beaches, and observers say activity seems normal. But these aren't the same animals that nested during last year's Gulf oil spill, and scientists are concerned about a continued rise in turtle deaths.

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT

The first sea turtle nesting season after the 2010 BP oil spill was contained is underway in the northern Gulf of Mexico. And biologists and turtle conservation groups report a good nesting season so far.

Last summer, as the ruptured well spewed an estimated 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, scientists and volunteers launched a risky rescue– moving fragile turtle eggs away from the oil danger.

Biologists and volunteers moved about 28,000 eggs , mostly loggerhead turtles, from Alabama and Florida’s Panhandle to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The goal was to spare the vulnerable hatchlings an encounter with the oil. It’s estimated around 14,000 hatchlings were released on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

The tiny turtles were not tagged, so no one really knows where they are now. And if they were spotted, they couldn’t be accurately identified.

Back on the Gulf Coast, it’s nesting season once again, and conservation groups like Alabama’s Share the Beach are finding new nests almost daily– an encouraging sign. But they caution not to read too much into the finds.

SOT: Mike Reynolds, Share the Beach Director

“The nests look normal, the turtles seem normal. So, all in all it seems like a pretty good year. Of course, the turtles that are nesting this year are not the turtles that nested last year. Turtles nest every other year or thereabout and so these turtles nested two years ago. What we will be really interested in seeing is a year from now when last year’s turtles that were here during the oil spill that had the greatest effect from the oil come back and nest on our beaches next year.

There are 5 species of sea turtles that nest on the beaches of the Gulf Coast, and all of them are protected, so, every morning Share the Beach volunteers comb Alabama’s coast, just as they’ve done every nesting season since 2001, looking for telltale signs of a turtle nest – crawl marks and churned up area near a nest site.

And biologists are doing a study as part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment – attaching satellite tags to incoming mother turtles to monitor their movements.

When the patrols spot a fresh nest too close to the waterline, they move the eggs before they set and become more sensitive to movement. They carefully put the eggs in a new nest and cordon it off. Read More

Disaster in The Gulf: The BP Oil Spill, What Happened?

http://news.discovery.com

IMAGE: Drilling operations to verify the status of the Bruin Lagoon hazardous whttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifaste cleanup. This site was contaminated with heavy metals, sulfuric acid and crude oil waste. It was stabilized under Superfund; this picture is of engineers drilling out a soil sample to check its condition (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers).

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!