Geology Infographics

I read a lot of technical literature on various geology topics. The papers are usually long and written in jargon filled language. It can be tough to hold your concentration and read through the paper in one sitting. What can help is a well complied figure which summarizes the ideas and the results of the study. By figure, I don't mean a graph or tabular display of data, but a graphic that presents the data with a combination of symbology, line art, text, and even images. Such infographics help in grasping the gist of the study and make reading the elaborate explanations easier (you still have to read them).

In this post I will showcase three infographics that I liked from my readings. I won't write long explanations about them, since the idea is to see if you can understand the broad findings by looking at a picture. Read the abstract of the paper to assess how effective the figure is.

1) Ediacaran Extinction and Cambrian Explosion.

The distribution through time and the changes in diversity of early complex multicellular life is depicted in this infographic. The evolutionary history of two distinct 'biotas' are tracked. The Ediacaran 'biota' is a catchall phrase that includes a diverse range of extinct large fossil organisms which may include some early animals as well. Metazoans ancestral to living animal groups are the second category. The carbon isotope curve shows two prominent deflections towards negative values, termed the 'Shuram' and "BACE" (Basal Cambrian Carbon Isotope Excursion) excursions. They are thought to indicate global environmental crises. Bookending this graphic are two diversity measures. On the left is the diversity of body fossils. On the right is the diversity of trace fossils, such as imprints, tracks, and burrows. 

Take home point. The Cambrian 'Explosion' is not about the origin of animals but their geologically rapid diversification whose roots lie a good 20 to 30 million years preceding the Cambrian events. Pulses of diversity expansion and collapse took place during that time period.

2) Dating Cave Art.

Humans have left some breathtaking artwork on the walls of caves all over the world. But how do we know when they were created? The pigments used in the drawings cannot be directly dated. One can use associated cultural artifacts to narrow down the time period. Or if lucky, mineral layers that entomb the artwork can be dated directly. This method still brackets the maximum and minimum age of the artwork. This infographic explains how artwork in a Spanish cave was dated using uranium and thorium isotopes. 

3) Angiosperm and Insect Coevolution.

I had written about this topic is detail in a previous post, but thought I'll share this infographic again. The Cretaceous was a time of great environmental shifts and changes in terrestrial biodiversity. Gymnosperms gave way to a dominance of angiosperms. The diversification of flowering plants had a large collateral impact on earth. The history of angiosperms and insect groups through the Cretaceous and Cenozoic is explained in this beautifully compiled infographic. 

If you have come across a science infographic that you particularly like, do share the link in the comments section.

Interview: Palaeontologist Prof. Ashok Sahni

This is a rich conversation between paleontologist Prof. Ashok Sahni and Dr. Devapriya Chattopadhaya of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune.

Email subscribers who can't see the embedded video can watch it at this link: Interview- Prof. Ashok Sahni.

It was so refreshing to hear Prof. Sahni talk candidly about the state of paleontology research in India,  preserving fossil sites, motivating students, the need for Indian scientists to proactively engage with the public about their work, and the importance of building bridges between research and societal needs.

Prof. Sahni comes from an illustrious line of scientists. His uncle was the paleobotanist Dr. Birbal Sahni after whom the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences, Lucknow is named. And his father was also a palaeontologist. His mother was not keen on him taking up geology, admonishing him that there were already too many rocks in the house. However, he persisted. 

Definitely worth your time.

Review Papers: Geodynamical Evolution Of India

Episodes, Journal of International Geoscience, has an open access special issue on the geology of the Indian subcontinent.

Excellent source for teachers, researchers, and curious science lovers.

I liked the paper on Deccan Volcanism a lot, especially the emphasis and attention given to the physical properties of the lava flows, and the problems of correlating (establishing their genetic and temporal relationships) lava sections from different parts of the Deccan Volcanic Province.

I don't know much about the Archean to Neoproterozoic age ( > 2500- 542 million years old)  southern granulite terrain, a region where very high temperature high pressure rocks known as granulites and charnockites are exposed. That is a topic I am looking forward to reading and learning about. The famous Anamudi Peak in the Western Ghats  are made up of these rocks. Geologists suspect that their high altitude is partly a result of differential erosion. Charnockites in particular are harder and have resisted being worn down, resulting in them standing out as high domes.

Another cool paper is on the role of microbial colonies on sedimentation patterns in the Proterozoic sedimentary basins of India (2500-542 million years ago). Microbial colonies grew as mats covering sediment surfaces influencing their accumulation and erosional patterns. Such environments became rare since Cambrian times (542 million years ago) when animals which eat and disrupt microbial colonies evolved.

Dive in.

Links: Kimberlites, Ecosystem Recovery, Early Atmosphere, Carbonates

Some readings on assorted subjects.

Enigmatic origin of diamond-bearing rocks revealed

These are volcanic rocks which are the primary source of diamonds. Kimberlite magmas originate from deep in the earth's mantle. A recent geochemical survey has provided insights into the nature of that source. In India, the famous Panna diamonds are derived from the Majghawan Kimberlite which erupted about 1073 million years ago in the Proterozoic Vindhyan Basin.

Diversity decoupled from ecosystem function and resilience during mass extinction recovery

The mass extinction that took place 66 million years ago devastated both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. How long does post-extinction recovery take and exactly how do community structure and ecosystem functions reboot? A study using a 13 million year record of nannoplankton (unicellular protists) spanning the mass extinction has yielded some insights.

The study suggests that essential ecosystem functions such as geochemical cycling of nutrients was established by few hardy species very soon in the extinction aftermath. This recovery preceded by million of  years the reestablishment of species richness.

Did Bacterial Enzymes Cap the Oxygen in Early Earth’s Atmosphere?

Photosynthetic cyanobacteria that expelled oxygen evolved by 2.4 billion years ago. But oceanic and atmospheric oxygen levels remained quite low, about 10% of current levels, until about 400 million years ago.

The Pre-Salt Hydrocarbon Reservoirs of the South Atlantic

A superb example of how an understanding of the environments in which sediments are deposited helps petroleum exploration strategy.  Focus is on the unusual alkaline lake carbonate deposits of Brazil, formed during the Cretaceous when South America and Africa started splitting away from each other.

Interviews: Meteorite Researcher And A Palaeontologist

Came across these two interesting interviews with a meteorite researcher and a paleontologist.

Meenakshi Wadhwa grew up in Chandigarh, North India. She wanted to study architecture. She ended up being a meteorite researcher. Quanta Magazine highlights her path from college to Director of the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University.

I totally related to this!

Applying from India, at a time when there was no internet, I had the Barron’s guide to graduate schools in the U.S., which was outdated by like 10 years at that point. I didn’t care about geography or any of that. I didn’t care if it was East Coast or West Coast or the Midwest. It was all half a world away.

.. and this was pretty amazing-

We get something like 100 tons of stuff falling on the Earth every single day. Spread over the entire planet, it’s not all that much if you think about it. Most of that is sand-size particles — tiny, tiny particles. Things that are about the size of a car, or van-size bolides, they hit a few times a year. Something the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor [which exploded over Russia in 2013], that’s a few times a year.

It's a terrific interview.

Dr. Lisa White is a paleontologist. Her specialty is Diatoms. These are single celled algae. They have a lot to tell us about past ecology and climate.  African Americans are poorly represented in the geosciences, and Dr. White as the director of education and outreach at the University of California Museum of Paleontology is actively working to increase diversity in the geosciences.

An excerpt:

I work nationally on a number of boards and with working groups and communities that are constantly examining the diversity in geosciences. We know our numbers don’t compare to engineering and the biological sciences. African American students are more likely to know about those fields and see the direct link to jobs. So we do have a bit of an image problem.

[It can be] difficult for students to have access to information about geosciences careers. There aren’t often a lot of standalone courses in high school. But there are a lot of interdisciplinary connections between all the fields, especially geoscience engineering, chemistry, water science, even agriculture…soil science.

Black Enterprise has the full interview.

Its always fun to read about how people arrive at a particular career trajectory.  A casual conversation, a book read during a holiday, or a trip taken with friends or for some other work can lead someone down  a career path they never thought they would take.

Papers: Global Tectonics, Cryogenian Period, Himalaya Miocene Lakes

I've come across quite a few interesting papers on diverse topics in the past couple of weeks. Most of them are 'big question' themes, dealing with processes taking place on global scales. Here are the links.

Global Tectonics:

1) Subduction Initiation of the Wilson Cycle - In plate tectonics, the Wilson Cycle refers to cyclical ( frequency of 100's of millions of  years) breakup of continents and the opening and closing of ocean basins. But how is subduction initiated and new convergent plate boundaries formed? Some good examples from the Western Pacific margin and eastern Indonesia.

2) How Subduction Broke Up Pangaea - Was it top down forces.. i.e. the pull exerted by subducting slabs or was it the horizontal traction exerted by a convecting mantle (bottom up) that broke up the supercontinent?

3) Why is Africa Rifting? - Insights into the formation of the famous East Africa rift system.

4) Gondwana Large Igneous Provinces: distribution, diversity and significance - Synopsis of several papers that explore the link between prolonged magmatic episodes, tectonics, climate shifts and sedimentation patterns in Gondwana continents.

Neoproterozoic:

1) Snowball Earth climate dynamics and Cryogenian geology-geobiology - In the Cryogenian Period, between around 715 to 635 million years ago, the earth was blanketed in two prolonged glaciations. Before these glaciations, the earth was a microbial planet. The end of these glaciations is associated with the evolution of multicellular complex life. What were the conditions during the Cryogenian Period that influenced the evolution of life?

Himalaya:

1) Oligocene‐Miocene Great Lakes in the India‐Asia Collision Zone - Mount Kailash is an important pilgrimage site for Hindus. The sediments that make up this mountain were deposited in narrow basins in the India-Asia collision zone. They preserve a record of surface environments and geodynamic mechanisms operating within the suture zone during the convergence of India with Asia.

All Open Access.

Papers: Tectonics And Physical Volcanology Of Deccan Traps

There are plenty of research papers on the geochemistry of the Deccan Basalts. But nature lovers and trekkers like me come face to face not with chemistry but with the physical forms of lava and the structural elements of the volcanic pile.

I found this list of papers most useful. They have helped me sort out my confusions regarding lava morphology and taught me something about the structural fabric of the western margin of the Deccan Volcanic Province.

1) Near N–S paleo‑extension in the western Deccan region, India: Does it link strike‑slip tectonics with India–Seychelles rifting? - Achyuta Ayan Misra Gourab Bhattacharya, Soumyajit Mukherjee, Narayan Bose

This is a structural analysis of the fracture systems that cut across the western margin of the Deccan province.  The area of study is the coastal plains, about 100 km north and south of Mumbai. The Indian western margin is a rifted margin i.e. it formed by the breakup of India with Madagascar (88 million years ago) and then Seychelles (64 million years ago). This type of margin is formed by tensional forces splitting apart continents and so you would expect normal faults, wherein blocks of crust have moved down along inclined fault planes.  Except here, the researchers find evidence of strike slip movement along sub-vertical fault planes. This means crustal blocks slid past each other. This implies oblique rifting with components of both extension and transverse movement between India and Seychelles. There are some really revealing field photos of this transverse (strike slip) movements.

2) Geology of the Elephanta Island fault zone, western Indian rifted margin, and its significance for understanding the Panvel flexure- Hrishikesh Samant, Ashwin Pundalik, Joseph D’souza, Hetu Sheth, Keegan Carmo, LoboKyle D’souza, Vanit Patel

Wait a minute. There are normal faults with downthrown blocks in this region too. And from the famous Elephanta Island. The fault planes dip eastwards producing easterly downthrows. That means the easterly crustal block has moved down. Again, some good field photos of fault planes and slickensides ( fault surfaces which get a polished striated appearance due to the frictional movement of rocks). These faults with easterly downthrows are found all along the west coast.  There is one near the proposed site of the nuclear power plant at Jaitapur in southern Maharashtra, which shows signs of intermittent movement over the past fifty thousand years. So, there is a very practical reason for understanding these faults.

3) Deccan Plateau Uplift: insights from parts of Western Uplands, Maharashtra, India- Vivek. S Kale, Gauri Dole, Devdutta Upasani and Shilpa Patil Pillai

This is a study of part of the Deccan plateau. I visited this region a few weeks back.  Very useful information of the various fracture systems that cut across the stacks of lava and their significance in terms of recent (Quaternary) crustal movements and controls on the drainage systems. Well thought out block diagrams illustrate the authors ideas very clearly.

4) Pahoehoe–a'a transitions in the lava flow fields of the western Deccan Traps, India-implications for emplacement dynamics, flood basalt architecture and volcanic stratigraphy-  Raymond A. Duraiswami, Purva Gadpallu, Tahira N. Shaikh, Neha Cardin

Good explanations of the morphology of basalt lava flows.  I really liked the sketches showing the internal structure of lava flows and the emplacement of pahoehoe lava fields with its transformation into transitional and a'a type lavas. Very useful guide for my next outing into the Deccan basalts!

Life Began As Clay Crystals

There is a fine article on BBC Earth by Martha Henriques on the work of chemist Graham Cairns-Smith and his theory that life may have begun as clay crystals. Cairns-Smith reasoned that clay minerals are made up of sheets of atoms bonded in a regular lattice pattern that is stacked in layers.  Pieces of this latticework break off, forming offspring crystals often with minor dislocations to the latticework. These offspring crystals grow ..break off with more minor changes... grow.. and so on. Organic molecules like the precursors of DNA might have used such a "replicating entity" as a scaffolding to build an organic replicating system.

His idea stood at the intersection of geology, chemistry and biology and his wife Dorothy recalls the reaction he got from his peers:

"He could never get funding," Dorothy says. A major stumbling block to securing research grants was that his work straddled too many different disciplines.

One time we went to California, and Graham gave lectures to the Menlo Park Geology Survey," says Dorothy. "They all said, well, your geology's fine but I don't think your chemistry's right. Then he gave a lecture to NASA on the chemistry side and they said, well, your chemistry's fine but I'm not sure about your biology. And then he lectured to Berkeley and they said, well, your biology's fine but I'm not sure about your geology".

Nowadays such grand problems are tackled by multi-disciplinary teams of sub sub specialists. If a chemist is asked to talk on the geology aspects,  he just forwards the email of his teammate.

Papers- Geochemistry Of Carbonate Diagenesis

Aladin's cave has opened up! (behind pay wall)

This is for students and researchers in sedimentary geology and particularly those studying carbonate sediments. The journal Sedimentology has compiled a virtual collection of  papers from the past few decades on the geochemistry of various aspects of carbonate diagenesis ranging from impact of sea water composition and sea level changes on broad patterns of diagenesis to how crystal shapes and sizes are controlled by chemistry of fluids and micro-scale roughness of constituent sediment to oxygen and carbon isotope studies of grains and cements and what they tell us about the past groundwater systems and their interaction with rock material during sea level falls. I read some of these papers during my PhD research, especially some of the classic early work on stable isotope analysis of Pleistocence and Holocene carbonate sediments and rock from the Caribbean and the Bahamas.

One bad miss though - The Great Barrier Reef- A 700 000 Year Diagenetic History. I wrote a post on it some time back. It uses stable isotope and minor element analysis to understand how the Barrier Reef sediments have, through the Pleistocene, interacted with sea water and fresh water (during periodic sea level falls) and transformed in their physical and chemical composition. One can draw surprisingly broad inferences about the regional geological setting from chemical patterns imprinted in carbonate sediments, such as, the thickness and extent of groundwater systems, the paleo-topography, the paleo-climate and the role of surface vegetation in enhancing chemical reactions.

Diagenesis transforms sediment into rock. This is a great reference collection about this fundamental process of rock formation in carbonate environments.

The Social Utility Of Archaeology

Archaeologist Graeme Barker has been working on a Neanderthal site in the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq. In August 2014 he had to leave that region due to advances made by ISIS forces. Last month he returned to continue his studies.

He makes a pointed observation on the social uses of archaeology.

You have also worked in Libya through civil war and conflict. What has driven you to persist with these digs?

People say to me they won’t go on holiday where I choose to work next, but in both cases we embarked on the excavations in conditions of stability and then events took over! But these excavations are enormous intellectual opportunities. They are ways of tackling big, fundamental questions about the human past, using the techniques of modern archaeological science.

There is also a broader social purpose. Archaeology is often thought of as a cosy sort of subject, but most of the killing that is going on around the globe relates to people's sense of whether they are similar or different to each other, all of which is rooted in how they feel about their past and where they come from. Archaeology has a huge role to play in building civil societies that are comfortable with the complexity of their past.

This is very relevant to the situation in India too, where tension between ancient social divisions erupts into communal violence from time to time. 

On Being On The Lower Rungs Of Science Hierarchy

This made me chuckle: On being a mycologist from Adam Rogers- Proof: The Science of Booze

"It was something even I, an undergraduate who didn't know anything could do", Scott says. " I could go out there and look for stuff" In the space of one anecdote, Scott had become a mycologist. You think you were an iconoclast in college? Try being a tall, gay, banjo-playing fungus major with a microscope in  your dorm  room,  walls decorated with fungal family trees you drew yourself".

and.. this on perceived scientific hierarchy:

Magnified fungi look like alien plants from a 1930s pulp sci-fi magazine cover, or a Dr. Suess illustration rendered by Pixar. Its a weird landscape, not to everyone's taste. 'If you found a new deer, you'd be on the cover of Nature," says John Taylor, a mycologist at UC Berkeley. "If you find a new fungus, you're in the middle pages of Mycotaxon. But we're not bitter".

That last sentiment reminded me of a conversation I had a long time ago. It was during my M.Sc field training week in Central  India. We were walking back to  camp after a long day's tramp through forests and stream beds. The conversation turned to career choices and the merits and excitement  of getting into a science career. One faculty with us reminded us not to expect attention. Most scientists  will live through  a low profile career.  They will meet a small circle of colleagues and peers. Their papers  will be read by a few  handful of others. You need  to accept this and be satisfied that your  choice and your work is adding  incrementally to our knowledge. Don't expect revolutions.

Is there a division in geology between glamorous and less weighty fields? Again, I  am reminded of the situation during my graduate days at Pune University. The geology department there grew out of a hard rock petrology tradition. There were experts galore on igneous, metamorphic rocks, structure and tectonics and field mapping. Sedimentologists studying hard, consolidated, heavily diagenetically altered and cemented rocks were considered real geologists. Working on unconsolidated Quaternary sediments and landforms was looked down upon. Even worse was if you were in the "environmental" field. Dibbling  dabbling with water samples was just not worth the trouble! It's not hard core geology- was the majority voice.

But times are changing.  The recent impetus in studying climate change means that Quaternary sediments and the secrets they hold about past climates and sea level changes is a hot area of research. So are fields like environmental geochemistry, spurred by increasing social awareness and a tougher regulatory regime, geared towards understanding the myriad pollution problems we face today. They attract funding from government grants and younger faculty and scientists are seizing the opportunity and launching their careers on *shudder* ..the unconsolidated stuff..

Russia's Underappreciated Contribution To The Geosciences

Nature Geoscience has a short editorial that pays tribute to Russia's scientific legacy, more specifically that in geology. Political differences and language barriers have isolated Russian science and scientific literature from the rest of the English speaking science community.

Consider this:

Lomonosov is the author of one of the most important treatises of geology that those of us who were educated in the West have probably never heard of. On the Strata of the Earth was published in 1763 and many of the ideas put forth in the book predate — by a quarter century — similar theories from James Hutton and others considered today, in the West, to be the founders of modern geology. Instead of being heralded alongside his European counterparts, Lomonosov's contribution to the geosciences has been buried, partially due to the fact that On the Strata of the Earth, like Lomonosov's other texts, was published in Russian.

One can quibble that Nicholaus Steno preceded both of  them, but the point is well made. It  is  of some urgency that Russian scientific literature be made more accessible to the rest of the world:

At this time of renewed tensions between Russia and the West over the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine and the risk of renewed isolation of Russian science, it is especially important that the scientific divide of language and politics be lifted so that the body of literature can grow from a stronger, united base.

read more here...

I remember a guest lecture by a Russian petrologist during my graduate student days in Pune, India. He gave an engrossing talk on retrograde metamorphism with examples from Russia and also from the early Proterozoic mobile belts (ancient orogenic mountain belts) from Central India. He loved those old  Zeiss natural light petrology microscopes our department used then (and still does!). Kept saying the mineral colors appear "natural".

How Are Diagenetic Studies Useful In Understanding Sedimentary Basin History

I dusted of my PhD dissertation last week for two reasons. A friend insisted that she wanted to see my research.. and then this paper in the Journal of Sedimentary Research (behind paywall):

Diagenetic Evolution of Selected Parasequences Across A Carbonate Platform: Late Paleozoic, Tengiz Reservoir, Kazakhstan by J. A. D. Dickson and J. A. M. Kenter

The work is eerily similar to what I did for my PhD which was carrying out a detailed study of cementation patterns in Middle and Late Ordovician carbonate parasequences from the southern Appalachians.

Dickson and Kenter use petrographic techniques along with cathodoluminescence to tease apart the cementation sequence and pore space modification of the carbonate rocks. Hydrocarbon reservoir quality depends in part on how reaction of sediment with water either dissolves material to create pore space or precipitates cements to modify pore space. So, understanding the timing of these events in the context of the burial history of the sediment pile on a basin wide scale can help geologists predict reservoir quality.

Ok, so what are Parasequences?

Cool! 3D Printing In The Geosciences

Geological  Fabrication Laboratory!.. Yes.. the future is already here.

and it is run by Franciszek Hasiuk of Iowa State University. He explains in a short note in GSA Today just why 3 dimensional  printing is so useful especially in the geosciences:

In the geosciences, we struggle with a fundamental problem—we love nature, but its aspects can be truly enormous or fantastically miniscule, very far away or exceedingly rare. Our burden is to overcome these conditions and communicate effectively about nature. With equal ease, 3-D printing can make hand-samples out of subduction zones and foraminifera, Martian topography, and seismic data.

Such models are immediately useful because much of what we need to communicate concerns shape and form (Fig. 1). For these purposes, we can produce inexpensive teaching models on demand, saving acquisition costs while bringing unique specimens to broader audiences. Three-dimensional printing makes the natural specimen the starting point. Digital models can be transformed (e.g., scaled, mirrored, distorted) by an instructor or a student to explore concepts like morphology, vertical exaggeration, or strain. With a little CAD work, we can make flexible fossils to more effectively communicate how organisms, extinct and extant, locomote.

Students might more easily develop a sense of scale from a touchable topography—that they themselves choose and print—that combines local elevation data showing natural and human features. By printing in multiple colors, geological attributes (like geologic formations or geophysical measurements) can be printed over elevation data as a way to better understand a new field area or check field results.

There is more about the applications of 3D printing in understanding rock pore networks with applications in the oil industry this Science Daily article.

Fascinating..

Conversation With An Ecologist About Fossils And Conservation

T R Shankar Raman, an ecologist who blogs at View At Elephant Hills and tweets @mizoraman wrote in last week with a question about fossils, field work and conservation. It ended up being a long conversation via email and so with his permission I am posting our conversation below.

In geology, field sampling does lead to outcrops being damaged and in-situ context of important fossils being lost. At least when I was a student, these issues about how to go about working an outcrop so as to cause least damage to the outcrop and what are the ethics of fossil collection did not come up for any discussion. Do faculty discuss this with students these days here in India?  I don't see these issues being widely discussed in the geology community here. I will be talking to a palaeontologist to get her views about the legality and ethics of collecting fossils from private and public lands in India which I will write up as a blog post.

In the meantime, below is our exchange.

Shankar Raman-

if you have the time. If geologists find something like this, how do they decide whether to leave it in situ (conservation) or remove (collection) for study? How many of the scientific collections are then actually subject to study and make it into publications and how many are simply lost? If locations of such fossils are made public/advertised, does it lead to their loss or a kind of vandalism? (I ask because there are parallels from ecology/field biology of collecting animal or plant specimens and related ethical and conservation concerns.)

Suvrat Kher

you raise interesting and important issues. I do feel conservation issues in the sense of leaving fossils or minerals in situ have not been widely discussed in the geology community yet. On a broader scale geologists do agree that some sites are of great importance as a geological heritage and those should (and some are) conserved. The Geological Survey of India is working of an expanded list of geological sites that they will ask for protected status. But at an individual level, a geologist or palaeontologist working in a field area is likely to sample whatever is available (the feeling may be that someone else would sample it and scoop my research :) ).

Regarding whether fossil collections go unstudied, the answer is the age-old "it depends" on who did the collecting and when. For example the GSI has enormous collections of fossils from more than a century of mapping the country. Much of these lie in museums and archives, unstudied, although some GSI geologists do describe them in monographs and such. But more value addition in terms of their ecological and evolutionary significance remains to be done.

On the other hand academic departments have shorter term goals, limited funding and a pressure to publish (esp in recent times). Their sampling programs hence tend to be limited and focused and much if not all of the fossils eventually will be published. In some cases though palaeontology departments are on the wane and so yes their collection may remain unstudied.

In terms of keeping fossil sites secret, not sure how that will work. If you publish then the location has to be disclosed. That is scientific practice. Vandalism however is a real threat and is happening with private collectors making of with a bounty (example minerals like zeolites found around Pune are providing a fortune for dealers). I guess one can't protect the entire sedimentary basin but demarcating protected areas and provided funds to secure such sites is the best one can hope for. Perhaps we need to make a distinction of collecting fossils from private lands (with permission) versus protecting public sites which fall within National Parks and such. The U.S has such a distinction.  In any case unfortunately this is not given enough importance and if there is a law against collection nobody seems to be aware (including me!) of it and am sure it is widely disregarded.

thanks for making me think aloud about these issues!

Shankar Raman-

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I see the parallel concerns and differences that you describe. In our field of work, there are serious concerns regarding (a) collection of specimens (a significant number languish without final description with scientists who dont want to be scooped and dont want to share or deposit in museums), (b) possible impacts on the habitat and the population of the species in the area where the study or collection is carried out. So it is a matter of both ethical and conservation concern.

And this is not just restricted to India... listen to this NPR broadcast for instance, triggered by a paper in Science: http://www.npr.org/2014/06/18/318307574/is-collecting-animals-for-science-a-noble-mission-or-a-threat

In our field (wildlife conservation), there is also the related issue of tourism in natural areas and other threats such as poaching. So we always try to be careful and sometimes decide to not disclose a specific location of an endangered species (a rare orchid, say, the nest of a breeding hornbill, or a wild male elephant with huge tusks) or do so after some kind of embargo period or with less specific geographic coordinates. Striking a balance is tricky... one does not want to end up with a situation that further stifles genuine research and also creates more bureaucratic red-tape for permits.

Hence my email and reticence regarding specific details about the fossils before I understand how things play out in geology. About law: the Indian wildlife act does prohibit removal of plants, animals (even dead, body parts etc) or destroying habitat in any way. But if someone chips away a bunch of fossils or pockets/bags a few... will they be caught? If caught, will they be fined or acted against? No idea! You should do a blog post about this someday! Conservation is a general enough word to be relevant to artistic heritage, geology, and
wildlife!

Thanks for the discussion!

What Ails Indian Science

A strongly worded article by Mathai Joseph and Andrew Robinson in Nature points the finger at the bureaucratic stranglehold over Indian research institutes.

Some snippets...

The basic problem is that Indian science has for too long been hamstrung by a bureaucratic mentality that values administrative power over scientific achievement. And, to preserve local control, research is still done mostly by small teams working in isolation rather than through collaboration — a key generator of impact.

..Nearly 60% of India's science budget2 is now spent on the CSIR, scientific departments and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) — an enormous and impenetrable empire set up in 1958. None of these national institutions has stimulated scientific excellence..

..The problems at the national level are mirrored in institutions. First, scientists are promoted on the basis of years of service, rather than achievement, and once at the top they stay until retirement age; long after, in some cases.

.. limited foreign travel and no travel support for research students, ruling out regular participation in leading conferences and research gatherings.

..the movement of researchers from one institution to another is discouraged, because administrators prefer senior positions to be filled by internal promotion rather than lateral hiring.

and 4 steps for change-

a) empowered funding agency
b) rotation of institutional role and responsibility
c) trans-institute groups (collaboration)
d) more money for State Universities that produce most of the country's PhD's.

..also worth reading is an older  article by Gautam Desiraju which takes a more detailed look on the current state of Indian science education and research.
 
..

A New Direction For Indian Higher Education And Research Institutes

Seema Singh on her blog writes about the upcoming change in leadership at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and suggests different avenues that could invigorate science education and research in India-

Somebody, and who better than the new director, has to take a long shot at how IISc can compete with itself — it has no competition from any other institution in the country and it can continue to do what it is doing –, contribute to the halted economic progress of the country, and break free from the culture of publishing papers to also creating products and processes that the country can use. In the past when I raised the issue of quality research resulting in products, Balaram told me I was “soft” on the industry (and hard on the academics) in not asking them to invest more in R&D. He is right to the extent that journalists cannot question industry’s poor investment in R&D, it’s their money and if they don’t see merit in R&D, their short-sightedness will come to haunt them. But institutions like IISc do research with public funds. Frankly, it’s not about value for public money, it’s about regard for public need. India needs scientists and engineers working on Indian soil to solve its problems, particularly in game-changing fields like energy, healthcare, water and so on.

IISc also has to figure out how to get the smartest people into science. Better still, if it rustles up resources to find a way to educate future discoverers of the country to live up to their potential, we’d all be the beneficiaries.

In the current election frenzy as we hear politicians take credit for good economic growth in the past, it’s sad to see scientists and engineers being left behind as unsung heroes. This perception has to change; IISc has to lead from the front, articulate its vision now that it also has a second 150-acre campus coming up in Chitradurga which offers it a mind-boggling opportunity to create a global institution.

And more suggestions:

1) Break free from the paper-publishing cycle
2) Big ideas, bigger risks
3) Bring engineering on par with science
4) Strike big collaborations with industry
5) Create role models
6) Do all this without losing its basic character

She tells me that she 'll make enemies writing this.. but a little plain speaking is what is needed most.

Read the rest here..

Experimental Plate Tectonics- What Makes India Such A Good Indenter?

In Current Science (Open Access) Srivastava and Cobbold set up a cool experiment to understand the deformation patterns along the India -Asia collision zone. Sand, silicone and honey has been used to represent lithosphere of differing strengths.

Abstract:

Since about 50Ma, the ongoing continental collision of India and Asia has led to widespread deformation within Central Asia. A similar pattern results when a rigid indenter pushes into a deformable medium. Therefore, for simplicity, many models have assumed that continental India is rigid. However, in reality, its northern margin has deformed, producing the Himalayan arc and syntaxes. To account for these, we have made physical models containing continental or oceanic plates. For realistic plate configurations and boundary conditions, our models have reproduced the Himalayan arc and syntaxes, as well as the asymmetric distribution of mountain ranges, high plateaus and basins in Central Asia. On this basis, we suggest that two features make India a good inde nter. First, the Indian continental crust is buoyant and so resists subuction. Second, the surrounding oceanic crust is mechanically strong. The result is a V shaped indenter, buoyant in the middle and strong at the sides.

Read the rest here.

Late Cretaceous Dinosaurs In India- Diversity, Habitat And Extinction

I attended a talk on Friday by Dr. Dhananjay Mohabey former Deputy Director General of the Geological Survey of India at the Agarkar Research Institute in Pune. The subject was Late Cretaceous dinosaurs along with a history of dinosaur research in India and some anecdotes that come with a long interesting career in the field.

Here is the summary of the talk which was handed to us and which I am reproducing below:

Late Cretaceous Dinosaurs In India- Diversity, Habitat And Extinction - Dr. Dhananjay Mohabey

The first dinosaur from the Indian subcontinent was discovered in the year 1828 by Captain W. H. Sleeman of the Bengal Army from the Lameta Formation near Jabalpur. The bones collected were passed on to a series of learned amateur palaeontologists that included Spilsbury to James Princep (1832) to Thomas Oldham (1862) to Hugh Falconer who identified them as reptilian bones (1868). Richard Lydekker studied these bones along with the bones collected by H.B Medlicot (1877) from the overlying horizons at Jabalpur and established a type species Titanosarus indicus - the first dinosaur to be describe from India. During the period, a few more finds of dinosaurs were recorded that included collections of bones by W.T. Blanford from Lameta of Pisdura, later described as T. blanfordi and Laplatosaurus madagascariensis by Lydekker (1877). The majority of initial discoveries in India came from the Late Cretaceous sediments of the Central Province during the periods 1828-1879.  Between 1917 and 1933, Charles Matley carried out systematic excavations in two expeditions (1918-1919 and 1932-1933) in the Lameta sediments at Bara Simla and Chota Simla at Jabalpur and also the Lameta bed at Pisdura. He published his monumental work on systematics of Indian Late Cretaceous dinosaurs in 1933. Following years, 1960 onwards, witnessed excavations of thousands of dinosaur bones from the Late Cretaceous sediments, mostly Lameta of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. Pisdura-Dongargaon in Maharshtra and Kheda in Gujarat. Discovery of dinosaur eggs in the Lameta sediments revived interest in research on India dinosaurs particularly with repect to their nesting behavior, habitat and environments. The discovery of plant bearing coprolites in the years 2000 provided a rare insight in to the dietary habit of the Indian sauropods. 

Of the vast collection of dinosaur bones since 1828, very few associated bones could be collected. Based mostly on the study by Charles Matley, at least twenty species of sauropod and theropod dinosaurs were described in India. However, current understanding based on the revised taxonomy recognises only two sauropod genera of Titanosauriforme dinosaurs viz Isisaurus colbeti and Jainosaurus septemtrionalis and four large-bodied abelisauridai theropods - Rajasaurus narmadensis, Rahiolisaurus gujaratensis, Indosuchus matleyi and Indosaurus raptorius and a small bodied theropod Laevishuchus indicus. 

Our study suggests that Late Cretaceous dinosaurs in India first appeared during the Maastrichtian in magnetochron C30n, ca. 500K years before the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary. Both titanosauriforme sauropods and abelisaurid theropods diversified and well established during C30n-C29r (Maastrichtian) with acme of their breeding and nesting. A change in biodiversity and abundance in dinosaur fauna from C30n to C29r is observed. The diversity and abundance of dinsoaurs of C30n -C29r declined rapidly with initiation of Deccan volcanism. Only a single or two titanosauriforme species with few individuals could survive the initial volcanic onslaught. The last stratigraphic level of the surviving dinosaurs in recorded in the C29r of Maastrichtian and 350k before the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary and they were all extinct before the K-Pg boundary. Continued work by the Geological Survey of India on the existing collection and new discoveries of dinosaur material from India, Pakistan and elsewhere in Gondwana have begun to resolve the composition and affinities of Indian dinosaurs.

Taking the Mesozoic as a whole the dinosaur record of India is quite poor. That does look like a preservation artifact. Jurassic rift basins of Western most India are mostly marine. Further in the Central and East parts, Early -Mid Mesozoic fluvial sedimentation in India took place in continental rift basins known as Gondwana basins since India at that time was a part of Gondwanaland.  These basins closed by around mid Jurassic except the Satpura and Godavari basins. There are some fluvial deposits of mid Jurassic and younger age from the Godavari basin especially (Kota Formation) that have yielded a few dinosaur fossils but the sample is too small to be able to say much about their diversity. Later in the Cretaceous E-W trending basin formed in West and Central India along the Narmada rift zone. Significant terrestrial sediments i..e sediments deposited in rivers and lakes accumulated in these basins.  These contain dinosaur remains preserved in the Maastrichtian Lameta Formation. So, much of the Jurassic to mid Cretaceous record is missing from Central and Eastern basins either due to erosion or non-deposition. There is only a tiny time slice of about 150 thousand years of the Maaschrictian with a record good enough to address in details questions about dinosaur diversity and evolution.

Overall it was an interesting talk. Some 400 crates of fossils of dinosaurs and other fossils were shipped out of India in the 1930' s by the British. The GSI is actively trying to trace if any of that collection still remains in British archives. There are archives in India too that have remain unstudied and so the picture of dinosaur diversity will certainly change as more archives are opened up and the fossils analyzed.

On the disheartening side we heard stories of dinosaur fossils being stolen from both the field site as well as museums. Field sites rich in dinosaur and other biota are being destroyed often to creeping urbanization around cities like Jabalpur and other towns in Gujarat. There were some really beautiful pictures of dinosaur nests with impressions of the clutch of eggs clearly seen. And one remarkable nest had preserved the remains of a snake, coiled and with jaws opened up in readiness to swallow an egg. And then there was a memorable picture of a large oblong dinosaur egg being used as a Shiva Lingam in a local temple near Dhar in Madhya Pradesh.

If the stratigraphic calibration that Dr. Mohabey presented is robust then it does seem clear that the Deccan volcanism wiped out dinosaurs in Central India at least. As Gerta Keller and colleagues have demonstrated, the volcanism had an impact on marine life in this part of the world as well and appears to have contributed to the mass extinction that took place 65 million years ago. This does not mean that the asteroid impact scenario is wrong. Just that 65 million years ago the earth experienced multiple cataclysmic events that reshaped ecology and life.

Quote: Werner Breuckner On Cyclic Carbonates

JSR Paper Clips highlights a paper from 1953 on cyclic carbonates with a memorable quote from Werner Breuckner:

“When a detailed study of limestones is made, their interpretation becomes more difficult.”

The 1950's was the time when such sentiments were apt as far as carbonate sediments were concerned. Giant oil deposits in carbonate rocks were being discovered in Texas, Gulf of Mexico and the Middle East. Research on carbonate rocks took on a new focus and urgency.

One can get a view of the importance of this new field in sedimentary geology using Google Ngram Viewer which tracks frequency of word usage in published books. I have used the terms "carbonate platforms" and "sedimentary petrology" to illustrate how the field of carbonate sedimentology gained significance from the late 1950's onwards. 

Werner Breuckner's paper abstract also says something interesting about the state of the science:

Cyclic variation in the CaCO ₂ content of Cretaceous calcareous sediments in the Helvetic zone of the Swiss Alps is attributed to temperature changes in the waters of the depositional basin caused by climatic variations, rather than to alternating uplift and subsidence of the basin floor. The significance of cyclic calcareous sedimentation for stratigraphic correlation, as well as paleogeographic and paleoclimatic investigations, is noted. 

He suggests that cyclicity is due to periodic changes in temperature and associated chemical conditions in sea water rather than the alternative of uplift and subsidence of the basin floor. Periodic tectonic movements can lead to depositional cycles but the time scales involved are generally in the hundreds of thousands of years at least. Many carbonate sequences show cyclicity of a much higher frequency measured in tens of thousands of years. 

Today, different causal mechanisms are invoked to explain deposition of these higher frequency cycles. Among them, especially relevant to shallow water intertidal and shelf areas is the autocyclic model of carbonate deposition (Ginsburg 1971) wherein feedbacks between sediment production and accumulation, current and sediment dispersal results in a kind of a playback loop wherein environments of deposition at certain time intervals keep shifting their positions resulting in one burying the other. The result is a repeated  stacking of the same facies sequence or a depositional cycle. The other mechanism is sea level fall and rise due to glacial and interglacial conditions. It was not until the early mid 1970's that geologists began started taking seriously the link between ice ages and carbonate cyclicity, prodded to some extent by J. D. Hays, John Imbrie and N. J. Shackleton's classic paper Variations in the Earth's Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages. This now has been used to explain the origin of many cyclic carbonate sequences.

Walter Breuckner in the 1950's though was working on a frontier area when a detailed look at carbonates opened up more questions than answers.