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Geologizing Women into the Field!

Posted on March 8, 2012

Geology usually requires outdoor activities in remote, inhospitable, hazardous or dirty environments. At the beginning of the 19th century it was hard to imagine that a gentleman would engage voluntarily in such an activity and it’s seemed even less comprehensible … Continue reading →

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Frauds, Fakes and Fossils

Posted on February 7, 2012

Almost every student of earth sciences knows the hoax perpetuated on poor Dr. Johann Bartholomäus Adam Beringer (1667-1738), often told in textbooks as warning of blind faith and argument from authority in science. However careful study of the still existing “lying … Continue reading →

Posted in Biology, Biology, Geology, History, Philosophy, Religion, Science | Leave a comment

January 6, 1912-2012: 100 years of Continental Drift!

Posted on January 6, 2012

January 6, 1912 the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener presented in a lecture entitled “Die Heraushebung der Großformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane) auf geophysikalischer Grundlage” (The uprising of large features of earth’s curst (Continents and Oceans) on geophysical basis) for … Continue reading →

Posted in Geology | 2 Comments

More Science than Fiction

Posted on December 17, 2011

Science-fiction stories and movies are not only entertainment for a rainy day but also mirrors of the scientific abilities, ambitions, even anxieties of a society. A short overview about tales and movies shows this evolution. The decade of 1950 to … Continue reading →

Posted in Biology, Environmental History, Geology, Humour?, Science, Teaching HPS | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Climate, Overpopulation & Environment – The Rapa Nui debate

Posted on November 1, 2011

“Anyone who thinks that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” Kenneth E. Boulding (1910-1993), American economist The plot of the movie “Rapa Nui” (1994) is based loosely on native … Continue reading →

Posted in Environmental History, Geology, History | Leave a comment

On the Track of Ichnology

Posted on October 20, 2011

“We can do nothing . . . that does not leave its impress behind, for good or for evil, for a blessing or a curse,..[] Our footprints are left in whatever we do. . . . The traces of our … Continue reading →

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History of Landslides – Landslides in History

Posted on September 4, 2011

Landslides belong to a class of geological phenomena which occur rapidly, contradicting our common believes of geology occurring only in large time spans. For this characteristic and the often catastrophic and well visible aftermaths such mass movements are widely recognized … Continue reading →

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It’s sedimentary, my dear Watson

Posted on July 20, 2011

On February 20, 1949 Mrs. Henrietta Helen Olivia Roberts Durand-Deacon, a sixty-nine-year-old wealthy widow, disappeared from the Onslow Court Hotel located in South Kensington, London. The police interviewed the residents and soon forty year-old John George Haigh became a suspect, … Continue reading →

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Fire and Ice

Posted on July 8, 2011

The geological sciences experienced major impulses during the 19th century, despite many phenomena were already reported by occasional travellers, it was the expedition of professional naturalists that started an age of exact measurement and observations – in 1848 the Russian … Continue reading →

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Roy Chapman Andrews and the Kingdom of the Cretaceous Skulls

Posted on June 12, 2011

Modern pop-culture legends tells that one of the most well-known adventurers and archaeologists in movie history, Dr. Henry Walton Jones, Jr. – or Indiana Jones (“who becomes 30″ this very day), was loosely based on real naturalists, one of them … Continue reading →

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