Department of Earth Sciences

Research involving Prof Mike Benton and Dr Stuart Kearns has shown that the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx had simple bristles – precursors of feathers – in alternate orange and white rings down its tail, and that the early bird Confuciusornis had patches of white, black and orange-brown colouring.

Professor Jon Blundy has been awarded a prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant to study "Critical Behaviour in Magmatic Systems". The project will investigate the coupling between phase relations of volcanic magmas and thermal evolution of magma chambers subjected to repeated influxes of fresh magma.

Signals from the disastrous Haiti earthquake were picked up by Earth Sciences' Dr Jo Gottsmann, on geophysical instruments normally used to monitor volcanoes. Prof Mike Kendall, Professor of Seismology, has been interviewed on BBC World Service TV and Radio, BBC Radio Bristol, Heart Radio, and Star and Jack FM (Bristol), and was asked to explain why this particular earthquake has caused so much devastation. You can listen to his answer on BBC's Science In Action

A newly-published study by Colin Palmer (PhD student) and Dr Gareth Dyke (former Bristol student now at University College Dublin) shows that the wrist bone of pterosaurs pointed inwards, rather than forwards, and had a subtle role in varying the dimensions of the front section of the wing

Apparently conflicting results published by researchers from Bristol's QUEST programme reveal the difficulties of accurately estimating sources and "sinks" of CO₂, although all of the authors agree that the only way to control climate change is through a drastic reduction in global CO₂ emissions

Evidence published today in Nature Geoscience, by Drs Pru Foster, Pierre Friedlingstein, Jo House and Prof Colin Prentice from the University’s QUEST programme, suggests that the rise in atmospheric CO₂ emissions continues to outstrip the ability of the world’s natural ‘sinks’ to absorb carbon.

Recently-published research by Dr Wolfgang Knorr, a member of QUEST's core team at University of Bristol, shows that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed the same since 1850, despite a huge rise in emissions over the same period. This suggests that oceans and ecosystems have a greater capacity to absorb CO₂ than had been previously expected

After 210 million years of being entombed in rock, the Bristol Dinosaur (aka Thecodontosaurus) is about to be released. Thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant awarded to the University of Bristol, Prof Mike Benton and his team will expand their labs., employing a specialist preparator to free the bones and an education officer to visit local schools.

In a letter published today in Nature, and highlightend on NERC's PlanetEarth online website, Prof Jon Blundy and colleague Dr Olivier Reubi of ETH Zurich show that andesitic magmas which are erupted in arc volcanoes around the world do not come from pure molten rock. Chemical study of tiny droplets of silicate liquid, trapped in crystals in andesite rocks has revealed that, instead, that they come from a mixture of silica melts and old crystal residues

Research by James Lamsdell and Dr Simon Braddy, published today in Biology Letters, sheds new light on why eurypterids (giant sea scorpions) became so large and eventually died out. Their work shows that competition with armoured vertebrates and environmental pressures affected the two main eurypterid lineages differently, but that both responded by increase in size of the animals..

Over 1,000 paleontologists from all over the world are arriving in Bristol this week for an international conference at the University of Bristol. For the first time since its foundation in 1940, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) is holding its annual meeting outside the Americas. -