Woolly Mammoth Found Under Michigan Soybean Field

YouTube/University of Michigan
 

Tre extinct creature is believed to have roamed the Earth between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago.

Dominique Mosbergen Senior Writer, The Huffington Post

Posted: 10/05/2015 04:08 AM EDT

When farmer James Bristle and his neighbor discovered a "wood-like" object while digging in his Michigan soybean field on Monday, the duo thought they had uncovered something fairly mundane.
"We thought it was a bent fence post," Bristle told the Detroit Free-Press. "It was covered in mud."
But upon closer inspection of the object, it started looking more and more like bone, said the farmer.
"We knew it was something that was out of the norm," he said. "My grandson came over to look at it, he's 5-years-old, he was speechless."

Paleontologists confirmed this week that the discovery, in Washtenaw County's Lima Township, was indeed "out of the norm." The "fence post" Bristle found turned out to be a part of a skeleton of a woolly mammoth that roamed the Earth between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago.

University of Michigan Professor Dan Fisher has been leading the dig to remove the mammoth’s remains from Bristle’s property this week. He told Ann Arbor News that the mammoth was probably 40 years old when it died, and had been hunted by humans who likely butchered it and stashed it in a pond.

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National Science Foundation : Viruses wage war on deep-sea bacteria to essentially feed and propagate

 

Undersea warfare: Viruses hijack deep-sea bacteria at hydrothermal vents

Date:

May 1, 2014

Source:

National Science Foundation

Summary:

More than a mile beneath the ocean's surface, as dark clouds of mineral-rich water billow from seafloor hot springs called hydrothermal vents, unseen armies of viruses and bacteria wage war.

.....

Credit: NOAA
[Click to enlarge image]

More than a mile beneath the ocean's surface, as dark clouds of mineral-rich water billow from seafloor hot springs called hydrothermal vents, unseen armies of viruses and bacteria wage war.

Like pirates boarding a treasure-laden ship, the viruses infect bacterial cells to get the loot: tiny globules of elemental sulfur stored inside the bacterial cells.
Instead of absconding with their prize, the viruses force the bacteria to burn their valuable sulfur reserves, then use the unleashed energy to replicate.
"Our findings suggest that viruses in the dark oceans indirectly access vast energy sources in the form of elemental sulfur," said University of Michigan marine microbiologist and oceanographer Gregory Dick, whose team collected DNA from deep-sea microbes in seawater samples from hydrothermal vents in the Western Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California.
"We suspect that these viruses are essentially hijacking bacterial cells and getting them to consume elemental sulfur so the viruses can propagate themselves," said Karthik Anantharaman of the University of Michigan, first author of a paper on the findings published this week in the journal Science Express.
Similar microbial interactions have been observed in shallow ocean waters between photosynthetic bacteria and the viruses that prey upon them.
But this is the first time such a relationship has been seen in a chemosynthetic system, one in which the microbes rely solely on inorganic compounds, rather than sunlight, as their energy source.
"Viruses play a cardinal role in biogeochemical processes in ocean shallows," said David Garrison, a program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research. "They may have similar importance in deep-sea thermal vent environments."

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Scientists Discover 310-Million-Years-Old Nursery of Bandringa Sharks

Jan 10, 2014 by Sci-News.com

According to paleontologists from the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan, long-extinct Bandringa sharks migrated downstream from freshwater swamps to the ocean to spawn in shallow coastal waters and left behind fossil evidence of one of the earliest known shark nurseries.

This is an artist’s impression of Bandringa shark. Image credit: John Megahan / University of Michigan.

The long-snouted Bandringa shark (Elasmobranchii, Chondrichthyes) – a bottom-feeding predator that lived in an ancient river delta system in what is today the Upper Midwest – is likely one of the earliest close relatives of modern sharks.
It resembled present-day sawfish and paddlefish, with a spoon-billed snout up to half its body length. Juveniles were 4 to 6 inches long and grew into adults of up to 10 feet.
Bandringa sharks were discovered in 1969 and soon became one of the most prized fossils from the well-known Mazon Creek deposits in northern Illinois.
Until now, paleontologists believed that the genus Bandringa contained two species – B. rayi and B. herdinae, one that lived in freshwater swamps and rivers and another that lived in the shallow ocean.


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Great Lakes ice shouldn't stop wind turbines but will increase costs, engineering professor says

Ice on Lake Michigan is a major concern for those exploring wind turbines on the Great Lakes as this winter scene from Muskegon shows. (Chronicle file photo)

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By Dave Alexander | dalexan1@mlive.com
 
on October 22, 2013 at 6:45 AM, updated October 22, 2013 at 7:27 AM

MUSKEGON, MI – Ice on Lake Michigan is apparently not a “show stopper” for those exploring wind turbine farms on the Great Lakes.

That is the initial conclusion of University of Michigan marine engineer Dale G. Karr based upon his work for the U.S. Department of Energy studying Great Lakes ice and its impact on wind turbine towers.
“I have not found ice to be a show stopper but our research will be useful in determining that question,” Karr told a lecture audience Monday, Oct. 21 at the Grand Valley State University Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center in Muskegon.
That is not to say that lake ice isn’t an issue, far from it.

University of Michigan Professor Dale G. Karr makes a point Monday, Oct. 21 at a lecture on Great Lakes ice and wind turbines at the Grand Valley State University Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center in Muskegon.Dave Alexander

“The Department of Energy is supporting this research to see if there is a show stopper,” Karr said. “Ice is a major issue if not the major issue for wind energy on the Great Lakes. The answer will start to emerge next spring when we will determine the designs and costs.”
Already offshore wind production is three times the cost of onshore wind farms such as the Consumers Energy Lake Winds Energy Park now producing electricity in Mason County south of Ludington, according to MAREC Director Arn Boezaart. Factoring in the cost of engineering wind tower protection against the ice is just one more reason that Great Lakes wind farms are likely more than a decade away, if the political will for such installations ever materializes, he said.
Karr said that the United States has taken an economic and technological back seat to Europe – especially Germany – and now both China and Japan in exploring, developing and deploying offshore wind. With the controversy of offshore wind in the United States for more than a decade, no offshore wind turbine has been installed although seven test projects are underway with federal funding.
“Europe is ahead of us probably a decade or so,” Karr said of offshore wind. “The German government is making offshore wind development the equivalent of our 1960s moon program. We are not the world leaders (in offshore wind) but now playing catch up.”
As the University of Michigan’s world-renowned department of marine engineering and naval architecture decided several years ago to delve into offshore wind technology questions, Karr began to study the effects of ice – an expertise he has obtained through studying oil and natural gas rigs in Arctic waters.
“We always get the question, why put wind turbines in the Great Lakes when there is ice?” Karr said of his research.

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