Solid Earth sciences articles within Nature Communications

Featured

• Article
  22 February 2011 | Open Access

  Multiple S-isotopic evidence for episodic shoaling of anoxic water during Late Permian mass extinction

  A final catastrophe killed 90% of marine species at the end of the Permian period, but significant biodiversity loss preceded this event. In this study, sulphur isotope evidence suggests that incursion of anoxic water into shallow regions may have contributed to biodiversity loss.

  • Yanan Shen
  • , James Farquhar
  •  & Boswell A. Wing

• Article | 15 February 2011

  New silica clathrate minerals that are isostructural with natural gas hydrates

  Clathrates are minerals with cage-like structural voids that can be filled by guest species; three types are plausible but only one has been observed in nature. Mommaet al. have discovered the remaining two types in Japanese marine sediments, and determined their structural similarity to natural gas hydrates.

  • Koichi Momma
  • , Takuji Ikeda
  •  & Yasuhiro Kudoh

• Article | 30 November 2010

  Historical land use change has lowered terrestrial silica mobilization

  Continental export of silicon to the coast is linked to ocean carbon sinks, but terrestrial silicon fluxes have not been quantified. Here, human deforestation and cultivation of the landscape are shown to be the most important factors in silicon mobilization in temperate European watersheds.

  • Eric Struyf
  • , Adriaan Smis
  •  & Patrick Meire

• Article
  23 November 2010 | Open Access

  Discovery of a black smoker vent field and vent fauna at the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge

  The Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge spreads extremely slowly and hydrothermal vent fields have not been reported in its vicinity. Pedersenet al. describe a black smoker vent field with large hydrothermal deposits and novel fauna distinct from those found in similar environments in the Atlantic.

  • Rolf B. Pedersen
  • , Hans Tore Rapp
  •  & Steffen L. Jorgensen

• Article | 05 October 2010

  Evidence for infragravity wave-tide resonance in deep oceans

  Ocean tides and infragravity waves—the Earths 'hum'—have very different periods and wavelengths. Sugioka and colleagues report resonance between these two phenomena using arrays of broadband ocean-bottom seismometers and show that some tidal energy is transferred to the deep oceans through this coupling.

  • Hiroko Sugioka
  • , Yoshio Fukao
  •  & Toshihiko Kanazawa

• Article | 10 August 2010

  Crustaceans from bitumen clast in Carboniferous glacial diamictite extend fossil record of copepods

  Copepod crustaceans are extremely abundant but fossilize poorly given their fragility; the earliest known fossils are from the Cretaceous period. Selden and colleagues report copepod fossils dating from the Carboniferous in a bitumen clast in Oman, extending their fossil record by 188 million years.

  • Paul A. Selden
  • , Rony Huys
  •  & Paul N. Taylor

• Article | 29 June 2010

  A new Argentinean nesting site showing neosauropod dinosaur reproduction in a Cretaceous hydrothermal environment

  Dinosaur nesting sites have been found in many different places, but the factors that influenced the choice of location are unclear. Here, a sauropod nesting site is described in a geothermal setting in the Sanagasta Valley, suggesting that the dinosaurs used the warm environment to favour the incubation process.

  • Gerald Grellet-Tinner
  •  & Lucas E. Fiorelli