Drilling the submerged continent of Zealandia: article in The Conversation
We recommend people read this report from NZ co-chief scientist Rupert Sutherland and others aboard JOIDES Resolution, of the progress on their scientific drilling campaign into the rocks of Northern Zealandia (Lord Howe Rise IODP Expedition 371).
http://theconversation.com/explorers-probe-hidden-continent-of-zealandia-83406
Please forward the link to anyone you think may be interested. Its written in a very accessible way.
ABC Catalyst program tonight on an IODP expedition: The Day the Dinosaurs died
Dear colleagues
There is a 55 minute program tonight on Catalyst at 8pm EST, about the Chicxulub asteroid impact IODP Expedition 364 drilling in mid 2016. The blurb about it says “The day the dinosaurs died: takes a look at the expedition now underway to drill into the Chicxulub asteroid impact crater in Mexico”. This was filmed aboard the ship, as I remember it by the BBC.
The story is of course a great one, with the asteroid impact forming a crater 180 km across, the resultant incredibly hot rock debris spreading around the Earth, starting fires and wiping out sunlight for perhaps two years, and generating tsunamis that piled up metres of sediment in what is now central Texas and elsewhere. The result was the extinction of most plants and animals, the end of the dinosaurs and the rise of the mammals – leading in the end to that pinnacle of evolution, us.
The drilling was by a jack-up rig in shallow water in the Gulf of Mexico off Mexico, and it drilled hundreds of metres of the early Tertiary shallow water limestones deposited later at the site, the relatively thin tsunami deposits that formed in a few hours 66 million years ago, and the shattered and melted granitic rocks that had been forced down ward before rebounding upward to form a rim around the crater wall. The hole was drilled over two months and recovered an almost complete set of sediment and rock cores to the total depth of 1334 m below the sea bed – a wonderful success…
