Geology Bites

Brian Wernicke on Lithospheric Extension and the Basin and Range Province

Where tectonic plates collide, the result is clear: the edge of a plate crumples and throws up a mountain belt. But where a plate is stretched rather than squeezed, the e

Bernhard Steinberger on Whether Hotspots Are Fixed

Volcanic island chains like Hawaii record the passage of a plate over a hotspot — a plume of hot rock rising from deep within the mantle. For decades, hotspots were assum

Sonia Tikoo on the Moon's Magnetic Field

We have known for decades that the Moon once generated a strong magnetic field — comparable in strength to Earth's — throughout the period from about 4.25 to 3.5 billion

Steve Brusatte on the Dinosaurs That Survived the Asteroid

Birds are the only dinosaurs that survived the asteroid impact 66 million years ago — but not all birds did. In this episode, Steve Brusatte draws on the fossil record to

Alec Brenner on When Tectonic Plates First Moved

A key development in the history of the early Earth is the formation of lithospheric plates that move independently of one another. In this episode, Brenner describes how

Materials in Extreme Environments

Most of the material in the Earth and other planets exists under extremes of pressure and temperature quite unlike those we inhabit on the surface of the Earth. Steve Jac

Esther Sumner on Turbidity Currents

Though turbidity currents are massive and frequent underwater events, we have rarely observed them directly. Esther Sumner is one of the few researchers who has. In the p

Hal Levison on the Mission to Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids

A key question about the early history of the Solar System is whether the giant planets formed roughly at the distances from the Sun they presently occupy, or, as some th

Sara Pruss on the First Reef Builders

The first multicellular animals to build reefs lived in the Early Cambrian around the time of the Cambrian explosion. They were sponges called archaeocyaths. In the podca

Michael Manga on Wet Eruptions

Water can have a dramatic effect on the style of an eruption. In the podcast, Michael Manga explains how the most powerful eruptions, such as the 2022 Hunga Tonga eruptio

Carina Hoorn on the Evolution of the Amazon Basin

The Amazon Basin is the most biodiverse region on Earth, being the home of one in five of all bird species, one in five of all fish species, and over 40,000 plant species

Anat Shahar on What Makes a Planet Habitable

Over 6,000 exoplanets have now been found, and the number is constantly rising.  This has galvanized research into whether one of them might host life. Since all forms of

Keith Klepeis on How Plutons Form

Plutons are bodies of igneous rock that crystallize from magma at depth below the Earth’s surface.  But even though this magma never makes it to the surface, it still has

Tom Herring on High-Precision Geodesy

There are three main types of geodetic measurement systems — satellite-based systems such as GPS, very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), and interferometric synthetic-

Jiří Žák on the Orogenies that Shaped Central Europe

In this episode, Jiří Žák describes the two main orogenies whose remnants figure prominently in central European geology: the Cadomian orogeny that lasted from the late N

Claudio Faccenna on the Dynamics of Subduction Zones

Subduction zones can be very long-lived, persisting for tens of even hundreds of millions of years. During that time they rarely stay still, but instead retreat, advance,

Cees Van Staal on the Origin of the Appalachians

In the podcast, Cees Van Staal tells us about the Paleozoic tectonic events that led to the formation of the Appalachians. The events are closely related to those involve

Andreas Fichtner on the Frontiers of Seismic Imaging

In previous episodes of Geology Bites, Barbara Romanowicz gave an introduction to seismic tomography and Ana Fereira talked about using seismic anisotropy to reveal flows

Renée Tamblyn on the Origin of Continents

When the Earth formed, it was covered by a hot magma ocean. So when and how did thick, silica-rich continental lithosphere form? Were the first, ancient continents simila

Folarin Kolawole on Continental Rifting

From East Africa to southwest USA, many regions of the Earth’s continental lithosphere are rifting. We see evidence of past rifting along the passive margins of continent