“As we ride up the trail that meanders the smooth river bottom [the Lamar River] we have but to turn our attention to the cliffs on the right hand to discover a multitude of the bleached trunks of the ancient forests. In the steeper middle portion of the mountain face, rows of upright trunks stand out on the ledges like the columns of a ruined temple. On the more gentle slopes farther down, but where it is still too steep to support vegetation, save a few pines, the petrified trunks fairly cover the surface, and were at first supposed by us to be shattered remains of a recent forest.“

Fig.1. Pencil drawing, ca. 1879, by Holmes of the outcrop of Amethyst Mountain, National Archives (image in public domain).

Fig.2. Two fine specimens of fossil tree trunks of Pilyoxylon aldersoni in the fossil forest on a steep hillside of Specimen Ridge, exposed by erosion of the basal breccia in which the stumps and roots are firmly embedded. Nearby a hoodoo, showing the character of the breccia and the manner in which it has been deposited. Circa 1890. U.S. Geological Survey Folio 30, USGS Photo Library.

Holmes studying the outcrops realized that the petrified stumps are distributed in various levels (more than fifty are today recognized) and embedded in volcanic ash, mudflows and breccias. These deposits provided also an explanation of the remarkable well preserved structure of the wood: from the volcanic rocks the silica was solved by the percolating groundwater and slowly substituted the organic components of the wood.
The upright position and the well preserved roots are evidence that these trees became embedded in situ in the sediments, probably covered by ashes, mudstone, breccias and conglomerates during a volcanic eruption. There is also evidence of fluvial reworking of some of the sediments, as many trees rooted in tuffaceous sandstones, interpretated as paleosoils, and conglomerates with pebbles rounded by fluvial transport.

Fig.3. Schematic profile of Amethyst Mountain as imagined by Holmes and published in “Fossil forests of the volcanic tertiary formations of the Yellowstone National Park. Bull U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories Vol.5.(1), 1879-1880.

A modern example, possibly resembling the environment of formation of the petrified forests, was the landscape as seen after the eruption of Mount St. Helens in May 1980 (as this paper by KAROWE & JEFFERSON 1987 emphasizes). The violent initial eruption destroyed large areas of the forest surrounding the mountain, leaving behind stumps that were buried under pyroclastic flows and mudflows.
Today, more than 30 years later, the effects of the eruption are still visible, even if new trees have started to colonize the devastated area. Subsequent research showed that St. Helens experienced many eruptions in the last 10.000 years. Repeatedly the forest was annihilated and repeatedly the barren landscape was reconquered by nature.

Also in Yellowstone the buried forest was destroyed, entombed in the volcanic deposits and the new formed landscape colonized again by a new forest. Holmes and other geologists could only speculate how many times this happened in the past:

“Pine trees of the types represented in the fossil trunks require 200 or 300 years to reach maturity, and redwoods may require from 500 to 1,000 years. Twelve or more of these forest levels have been found. By multiplying this number by the minimum age of the trees (200 years) we shall have 2,400 years, and by multiplying it by the maximum age of the redwood (1,000 years) we shall have 12,000 years as the possible time during which these forests flourished. It is possible that the truth lies somewhere between these extremes.”
(KNOWLTON 1921)

Bibliography:

COFFIN, H.G. (1976): Orientation of trees in the Yellowstone Petrified Forests. Journal of Paleontology. Vol.50(3): 539-543
KNOWLTON, F.H. (1921): Fossil Forests of the Yellowstone National Park. USGS Monograph 32: 651-791

Despite recognized as volcano, Mount Pelée – the “bald headed” mountain, owning possibly its name to the devastation of an volcanic eruption occurred in 1635 – on the island of Martinique was considered extinct since 1767, when an eruption killed more than 16.000 people. However in 1856 the mountain showed signs of unrest, with minor eruptions of steam and single mudflows descending the slopes.

Fig.1. A relief map of Mount Pelée showing the area affected by the eruptions of May 8, and August 3, 1902, after Lacrox 1904. Note on the summit of the volcano two depressions: “L´Etang Sec”, a temporary lake, and the lake “Lac de Palmistes” (image in public domain).

In April 1902 the old father – as the mountain was referred by the locals -  awoke again with violent explosions and on the summit a small basin became filled with boiling water – the L’Etang Sec (the dry lake) was born.
In April the local newspaper “Les Colonies” noted:

“The rain of ashes on St. Pierre) never ceases. At about half-past nine the sun shone forth timidly. The passing of carriages in the streets is no longer heard. The wheels are muffled [in the ashes]. Puffs of wind sweep the ashes from the roofs and awnings, and blow them into rooms of which the windows have imprudently been left open.“

Many residents left the city, but they became immediately replaced by refugees from the area surrounding the volcano and many non-residents coming to town for the election of the new island governor May 10.
On May 5, heavy rain occurred and a natural dam holding back the boiling water of L´Etang Sec collapsed. A gigantic mudflow rushed down the slopes of Pelée and buried completely a sugar mill. 150 people were killed; the waves generated by the flow in the sea reached even the harbour of St. Pierre.
In an effort to tranquillize the public and hold the voters in the city the French governor appointed a commission to investigate the dangers from the volcano. Again the newspaper “Les Colonies” reported:

“[Professor Landes of the Lycée concludes that] Mt. Pelée presents no more danger to the inhabitants of Saint Pierre than does Vesuvius to those of Naples.”

Fig. 2. The newspaper “Les Colonies” May 7, 1902 with the statement that La Pelée “presents no danger”, 24 hours later all journalists and the editor were dead (image in public domain).

Ironically the Italian Marino Leboffe, Capitan of the freighter “Orsolina” anchoring in the harbour, complained on May 2, to the local authorities:

“I know nothing about Mount Pelée, but if Vesuvius were looking the way your volcano looks this morning, I’d get out of Naples.“

On May 7, the volcano La Soufriére on the nearby island of St. Vincent exploded. The people of Martinique hoped that the violent eruption released enough pressure from the interior of the earth to prevent the imminent eruption of  the Pelée.
May 8, seemed to be a sunny day. A column of steam was rising above Pelée, but otherwise the volcano seemed to cool down.
At 7:50 in the morning the Pelée erupted, causing possibly four pyroclastic currents.

Fig.3. A sequence of a pyroclastic flow – photographed December 16, 1902 at La Pelée by French volcanologist Alfred Lacroix. Lacroux will propose the first modern classification of volcanic activity – one explosive type will be known as “Pelean type”. This particular kind of eruption is common on convergent plate margins and characterized by its explosive character and dangerous pyroclastic density currents, as explained by volcanologist Jessica Ball (image in public domain).

Estimated 28.000 to 40.000 people died, only three survivors were reported. The young shoemaker Léon Compère-Léandre (1874-1936) escaped from the border of St. Pierre into the village of Fonds-Saint-Denis, the girl Havivra Da Ifrile tried to escape to a cave near the coast and was washed onto the sea, where she was rescued days later. To Da Ifrile we owe one or the rare eyewitnesses accounts of the eruption:

“But before I got there, I looked back-and the whole side of the mountain which was near the town seemed to open and boil down on the screaming people. I was burned a good deal by the stones and ashes that came flying about the boat, but I got to the cave,…“

Fig.4. and 5. Photograph of St. Pierre, Martinique, in the 19th century long before the eruption, and photograph by Angelo Heilprin of St. Pierre after the eruption of Mount Pelée on May 8, 1902. The monstrous blast and subsequent pyroclastic flows wiped out the entire city, only four locals survived this day of the final eruption, one was staying outside the city, the other three escaped or survived by mere chance (images in public domain).

One of the most well-know survivor was the 25-year-old dockworker Louis-Auguste Cyparis (1875-1929), who survived in his small prison cell and became known as the “Samson of St. Pierre” in the Barnum & Bailey Circus, where he worked and told his story after his “adventure”.

On May 20, Pelée exploded again investing the ruins of the city and killing 2.000 rescuers, engineers, and mariners bringing supplies to the island.

Fig.6. From October 1902 to September 1903 (when it collapsed) a 300m high obelisk of lava formed from  L´Etang Sec, the American scientist Angel Heilprin noted that it resembled a “. . . nature’s monument dedicated to the 30,000 dead who lay in the silent city below” (image in public domain).

Bibliography:

DAVIS, L. (2008): Natural Disasters. Facts on File Sience Library. Infobase Publishing: 464
HEILPRIN, A.(1903): Mont Pelée and the Tragedy of Martinique. J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and London: 335.
LACROIX, A. (1904) : La Montagne Pelée et ses éruptions. Masson et Cie, Paris.
MORRIS, C. (2006): The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire. Librivox.

Online Resources:

ALEAN, J. ; CARNIEL, R. & FULLE, M. (15.05.2007): La Montagne Pelée und Saint Pierre – September 2005. (Accessed 08.05.2012)
Cerimes (01.01.1974): Eruption de la montagne Pelée – 8 Mai 1902. (Accessed 08.05.2012)

“The cloud had a spherical form and resembled rounded protuberances amplifying and doubling with terrifying energy. They extended to the sea, in our direction, boiling and changing shape in every moment. It didn’t spread laterally. It didn’t rise up in the atmosphere, but it descended on the sea as a turbulent mass….“

For the very first time geologists observed a deadly “nueé ardente” – an “incandescent cloud” or “glowing avalanche” as the phenomenon was later named by the French volcanologist Alfred Lacroix (1863-1948). A “nueé ardente”, today referred as pyroclastic density current, is a mixture of volcanic particles and hot gases that flows according to its density over long distances. Pyroclastic flows can originate from the collapse of parts of the cooling eruption column, from laterally blasts or from hot avalanches derived from the collapse of a lava dome or parts of a volcano.

After recognizing this peculiar volcanic phenomenon geologists became concerned: Why are pyroclastic density current so dangerous and how far do the deathly effects reach?
In the ruins of Saint-Pierre various hinds were observed that helped solve this mystery. Some bodies were horrible mangled, exploded from inside and their guts exposed on the outside. Other corpses were horrible burnt, but surprisingly the cloths covering the bodies were untouched. The heat inside the pyroclastic flow that destroyed Saint-Pierre was estimated based on observations of molten glass (melt temperature ca. 700°C) and unaltered copper tubes (melt temperature ca 1.100°C) found in the ruins between 700-1.000°C.
This intense heat burns the skin, the outer layers of the body shrink due the thermal impact and are torn apart and the inner organs were squeezed out. Other people in areas not directly hit by the 1.000°C hot flow inhale cooler gases (300°C), they suffocate on the ashes inside the lungs and were cooked from inside to the outside, letting the clothes intact.

Further evidence how pyroclastic currents kill was provided by the examination of an eruption that occurred almost 2.000 years ago.
In the year 79 A.D. the eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed the villages and cities surrounding the volcano, also the famous city of Pompeii.

The first human remains were discovered in Pompeii only two months after the beginning of systematic excavations, April 19, 1748, at the crossing of Via Stabia and Via Nola. During the more or less scientific motivated excavation campaigns in the following centuries further human and animal remains were discovered. In the nearby village of Herculaneum 328 bodies, in Pompeii the known bodies until 2002 are 1.150, not considering some hundred bodies discovered earlier but later buried again or lost forever.
The early tourist Hester Lynch, visiting Pompeii in 1786 remembers: “some people would take away some parts, as I did, to possess in my little museum a bone older as 17 centuries; .[].. as I observed a French gentleman, when I saw him put a human bone in his pocket.“

Fig.1. Discovery of human remains during the visit of the emperor Giuseppe II in Pompeii, artwork by Jean-Claude Ricard de Saint-Non (1781-1786).

Research published in 2010 compared artificially heated recent bones with bones recovered from the surge deposits of Pompeii. Also the documented position of bodies in relation to the stratigraphy of ash and surge deposits was considered.

Fig.2. Simplified stratigraphy of the volcanic deposits in Pompeii correlated to the chronology of the destruction of the cities surrounding Mount Vesuvius. The eruption started with ash and tephra-fall (A1-A8), this continuous deposition was interrupted by a sequence of six distinctive pyroclastic currents or surges (S1 to S6) of increasing power, which caused widespread building collapse and fatalities.
The pyroclastic surge S4 caused most of the fatalities in Pompeii, even if the resulting deposit is only 3 centimetres thick, because it was the first surge to actually reach and cover the city, devastating an area of ca. 80 square-km. Volcanologist “Fitzgabbro” sheared some images of the various deposits at Pompeii and surrounding areas.

In Pompeii, within the ash beds of the early eruptive phase, 394 skeletons were found. 90% of these victims died within buildings, probably due to roof and floor collapse. Deposits of the later S4 surge preserved the remains of 650 persons, supposedly killed by the effects of the surge:  heat and ash suffocation.

From these 93 plaster casts of the cavity left by the decomposed corpse, 37 corpses from Oplontis (a seaside suburbia site) and 78 skeletons of Herculaneum were classified in a scheme considering the posture of the corpse – for example life-like when showing an apparent “freezing” in the act of movement – most bodies were found in such a posture (73%).

The damage on the ancient bones, showing micro-cracks on the surface and recrystallistaion of the interior bone structure, are signs of thermal modification. Comparing these bones with the observations made on modern bones, heated in experiments, the researchers were able to determinate a temperature range inside the surge that killed the people, at least 500-600°C at Oplontis and Herculaneum, and 300-250°C at Pompeii.

The temperature at Herculaneum and Oplontis was enough to vaporize the flesh of the victims, so that the ash could embed the skeletons, in Pompeii, due the cooler temperatures, the bodies remained intact and were preserved inside the volcanic sediments. After decomposition of the organic material a void remains, that today can be filled with plaster to form a cast of the unfortunate victims.

The published result questions some earlier assumptions, like the supposed main death cause of the people by ash suffocation. The new research indicates that heat was the main cause of death, the exposure to the at least 250°C hot surges at a distance of 10 kilometres from the volcano was sufficient to cause instant death and spasms (“freezing” the people’s movement), even if people were sheltered within buildings.
Despite the fact that impact force and exposure time to dusty gas of the pyroclastic flow declined toward the periphery of the surge, theoretically improving survival possibilities, the temperatures remained lethal up to the outer depositional limits of the pyroclastic flows.
These are important results and must be considered when hazard maps of the area surrounding a volcano are compiled. Only at Mount Vesuvius estimate 300.000 people live today within an area considered at high risk of pyroclastic flows during a larger, explosive eruption (the state agency I.N.G.V. released some videos of the computer simulations, showing the possible spread of pyroclastic clouds around Vesuvius).

Bibliography:

DE CAROLIS, E. & PATRICELLI, G. (2003): Vesuvio 79 d.C. la distruzione di Pompei ed Ercolano. L´ERMA di BRETSCHNEIDER: 129
GIACOMELLI, L.; PERROTTA, A.; SCANDONE, R. & SCARPATI, C. (2003): The eruption of Vesuvius of 79 AD and its impact on human environment in Pompeii. Episodes, Vol. 26, No. 3
LEWIS, T.A.(ed) (1985): Volcano (Planet Earth). Time-Life Books: 176
LUONGO, G.; PERROTTA, A. & SCARPATI, C. (2003): Impact of the AD 79 explosive eruption on Pompeii, I. Relations amongst the depositional mechanisms of the pyroclastic products, the framework of the buildings and the associated destructive events. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 126: 201-223 doi:10.1016/S0377-0273(03)00146-X
LUONGO, G.; PERROTTA, A.; SCARPATI, C.; DE CAROLIS, E.; PATRICELLI, G.; CIARALLO, A. (2003): Impact of the AD 79 explosive eruption on Pompeii, II. Causes of death of the inhabitants inferred by stratigraphic analysis and areal distribution of the human casualties. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 126: 169-200 doi:10.1016/S0377-0273(03)00147-1
MASTROLORENZO, G.; PETRONE, P.; PAPPALARDO, L. & GUARINO, F.M. (2010): Lethal Thermal Impact at Periphery of Pyroclastic Surges: Evidences at Pompeii. PLoS ONE 5(6): e11127. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011127

The Austrian emperor Maximilian I., accidentally in the town for political reasons, ordered that the mysterious rock was to be exposed in the local church. This seemed necessary, rocks falling from the sky were believed to be dangerous premonitory signs of war, plague and famine – only by putting the rock in chains on holy ground their evil influence could be neutralized.

The shooting star became soon known as the “thunderstone of Ensisheim” and scholars speculated about the significance of the strange rock.
In a first pamphlet the Swiss humanist Johann Bergmann von Olpe remembered of various signs in the sky and wonders observed in the last years, more remarkable than everything that could be read in books, but this rock was by far the greatest of all miracles. He continues to tell the extraordinary effects of the phenomena; The thunderbolt produced by the rock alone was heard all over Europe, or at least until the nearby Swiss.
Bergmann is sure that the stone is a sign for misfortune for all the enemies of emperor Maximilian, god himself send it to declare his support for a war against France!

Fig.1. The impact as depicted in the “Schweizer Bilderchronik des Luzerners” by Diebold Schilling in 1512.

The thunderstone of Ensisheim is today the oldest known recorded (and still preserved) meteorite in Europe.

For centuries this and other thunderstone(s) will be discussed and mentioned in various chronicles and reports, but the origin of these rocks remains mysterious until the 18th century.
Two main explanations will then prevail – meteorites are solidified air or vapour and so phenomena of the atmosphere; or, according to other scholars, products of earth associated somehow to volcanoes. An extraterrestrial origin was considered impossible because the space between the planets was considered free of matter, idea supported and promoted by the English astronomer Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727).

An important contribution to solve the riddle comes from the German physician and lawyer Ernst Friedrich Chladni (1756-1827). Chladni collected many eyewitness reports and petrologic and chemical analyses and in 1794 publish his work entitled “Über den Ursprung der von Pallas gefundenen und anderer ihr ähnlicher Eisenmassen, und über einige damit in Verbindung stehende Naturerscheinungen” (About the origin of the by Pallas discovered and other similar masses of iron and their connected natural apparitions). He is the first to publish and carefully document the hypothesis that meteorites are not rocks from or formed on earth, but remnants of the formation of the solar system; coming to earth from the interplanetary space.

Bibliography:

BÜHLER, R.W. (1992): Meteorite – Urmaterie aus dem interplanetaren Raum. Weltbild Verlag:, Augsburg: 192

Online Resources:

GROSSMAN, M. (2010-2011): Meteorite Manuscripts. (Accessed 29.03.2011)

O, promised land
What a wicked ground
Build a dream
Watch it all fall down”
“San Andreas Fault”

Maybe the first persons to note something unusual in early morning of April 18, 1906 were the sailors of the ship “Wellington“, just entering the bay of San Francisco. The captain reported later that the ship “shivered and shook like a springless wagon on a corduroy road” even if the sea was as “smooth as glass“.

At the shores of Ocean Beach the worker Clarence Judson was swimming in the sea, when he was grabbed by a strong current and sucked into the deep – only with great effort he reached the safe shore.
“I tried to run to where my shoes, hat and bathrobe lay, but I guess I must have described all kinds of figures in the sand. I thought I was paralyzed. Then I thought of lightning, as the beach was full of phosphorescence. Every step I took left a brilliant iridescent streak. I jumped on my bathrobe to save me.“

In Washington Street the police sergeant Jesse Cook observed a terrifying spectacle:

“The whole street was undulating. It was as if the waves of the ocean were coming toward me, billowing as they came..[] Davis Street split right open in front of me, … A gaping trench. . . about six feet deep and half full of water. Suddenly yawned and sprang up on the sidewalk at the southeast corner while the walls of the building I had marked for my asylum began tottering. Before I could get into the shelter of the doorway the walls had actually fallen inward. But the stacked-up cases of produce that filled the place prevented them from collapsing.“

George Davidson, professor for Geography, woke up from the tumult coming from the streets. He grabbed his watch on the desk and noted the length of a first quake – 60 seconds – and a second – again 20 to 40 seconds . His observations – 5:12 in the morning – will later be used to determinate the official time of occurrence of the great earthquake of San Francisco in 1906. So early in the morning, many people were still asleep and killed in their beds, those who escaped gathered in the streets. Despite the earthquake most of the city seemed still intact and surprisingly quiet.
In 1906 San Francisco was already considered a great and ambitious, but also corrupt and infamous, city with more than 400.000 inhabitants; it had experienced an incredible growth since 1848 thanks to the discovery of gold in the rivers of California. Now it was an important harbour to the Pacific Ocean and a modern trade place, many shops sold the newest technologies in film equipment. The earthquake of San Francisco will become the first natural disaster of its magnitude to be so well documented by photography and motion picture footage (even in colour).
This growth and achievements were however possible only by cheap and fast construction methods and so most buildings in San Francisco were made of wood and not exceptionally stable. San Francisco had burned to the ground six times in the past century and experienced stronger earthquakes in 1865 and 1868, when 30 people were killed. However the modern fire equipment – horse driven and steam powered water pumps – was believed to be capable to fight every fire.

Fig.1. “Earthquakey Times“, a caricature by Ed Jump of the October 8, 1865 earthquake in San Francisco. While he was working as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco, Mark Twain experienced the earthquake which he describes in his 1872 book “Roughing It.” – “It was just after noon, on a bright October day. I was coming down Third Street. The only objects in motion anywhere . . . were a man in a buggy behind me, and a [horse-drawn] streetcar wending slowly up the cross street. . . . As I turned the corner, around a frame house, there was a great rattle and jar. . . . Before I could turn and seek the door, there came a terrific shock; the ground seemed to roll under me in waves, interrupted by a violent joggling up and down, and there was a heavy grinding noise as of brick houses rubbing together. I fell up against the frame house and hurt my elbow. . . A third and still severer shock came, and as I reeled about on the pavement trying to keep my footing, I saw a sight! The entire front of a tall fourstory brick building on Third Street sprung outward like a door and fell sprawling across the street, raising a great dust-like volume of smoke! And here came the buggy-overboard went the man, and in less time than I can tell it the vehicle was distributed in small fragments along three hundred yards of street. . . . The streetcar had stopped, the horses were rearing and plunging, the passengers were pouring out at both ends. . . . Every door, of every house, as far as the eye could reach, was vomiting a stream of human beings; and almost before one could execute a wink and begin another, there was a massed multitude of people stretching in endless procession down every street my position commanded. . . . For some days afterward, groups of eyeing and pointing men stood about many a building, looking at long zig-zag cracks that extended from the eaves to the ground…” (image in public domain).

Police sergeant Jesse Cook was the first person to report a fire in a grocery in Clay Street, some hours later there where already fifty in the entire city. The fire fighters realized horrified that the water pipers in the underground were broken and the hydrants in the city useless. The firestorm rages in the city for three days and will be responsible for 90 percent of the 28.000 destroyed buildings.

The journalist Arnold Genthe is thrilled by the scenery and the devastation caused by the approaching fire, unfortunately he discovers that his camera was damaged during the quake. “I found that my hand cameras had been so damaged by the falling plaster as to be rendered useless. I went to Montgomery Street to the shop of George Kahn, my dealer, and asked him to lend me a camera. “Take anything you want. This place is going to burn up anyway.” I selected the best small camera, a 3A Kodak Special. I stuffed my pockets with films and started out….”
He will take some of the most famous photos in history.

Fig.2. “Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18. 1906“, photography by Arnold Genthe (image in public domain)

In Jackson Street the owner of the “Hotaling´s Whiskey” distillery decides to remain and fight the flames . He pays 80 men to sprinkle 5.000 barrels of whisky with water pumped out from the sewer system. Later he will mock all those who claim that the earthquake was send by god by coining a new advertising slogan for his products:

“If, as some say, God spanked the town, for being over frisky – why did He burn the churches down an save Hotaling´s Whiskey?“

Army troops were soon ordered into the city to help the firefighters and prevent panic and looting. Despite the fact that martial law was never proclaimed, the major authorized policeman and soldiers to shoot looting persons – “Obey orders or get shot” was the grim warning on some improvised signboards.
Guion Dewey, a businessman from Virginia, wandering onto the streets of downtown San Francisco minutes after the quake experienced the best and worst of human behaviour, as he later reported in a letter to his mother:

“I saw innocent men shot down by the irresponsible militia. I walked four miles to have my jaw set. A stranger tried to make me accept a $10 gold piece. I was threatened with death for trying to help a small girl drag a trunk from a burning house, where her father and mother had been killed. A strange man gave me raw eggs and milk . . . (the first food I had had for twenty-two hours). I saw a soldier shoot a horse because its driver allowed it to drink at a fire hose which had burst. I had a Catholic priest kneel by me in the park as I lay on a bed of alfalfa hay, covered with a piece of carpet, and pray to the Holy Father for relief for my pain. . . . I saw a poor woman, barefoot, told to “Go to Hell and be glad for it” for asking for a glass of milk at a dairyman’s wagon; she had in her arms a baby with its legs broken. I gave her a dollar and walked with her to the hospital. . . .I was pressed into service by an officer, who made me help to strike tents in front of the St. Francis Hotel, when the order was issued to dynamite all buildings in the vicinity to save the hotel. I like him, and hope to meet him again. When he saw I was hurt, which I had not told him, not yet having been bandaged, he took me to his own tent and gave me water and brandy and a clean handkerchief.“

The earthquake and the firestorms killed estimated 3.000 to 4.000 people, destroyed 28.000 buildings and the infrastructure of the entire city – but in a surprising rush people rebuild their homes and life, and just three year later most of San Francisco looked as if the earthquake never happened.

Seismology was still a young scientific discipline at the time of the earthquake in San Francisco, in part as a result of the lack of appropriate equipment like sensible tools to measure the tremors of earth. Worldwide there were only 96 seismographs operating, none of these in California. In the aftermath of the disaster, only three days later, the Governor of California announced the formation of the State Earthquake Investigation Commission, led by geologist Andrew C. Lawson of the University of California.
The commission concentrated its work on the San Andreas Rift, a nearby valley until then considered of minor interest and mapped geologically only in short sections. For two years Lawson and his team followed the rift along ponds, streams and hills on foot and horseback. They recognized that the rift follows almost the entire coastline of California for more than 1.000 kilometers (620 miles). During the April 18, earthquake almost 480 kilometers (300 miles) of this rupture were displaced horizontally, not vertically, as geologists had previously believed to be the source of earthquakes. The commission had discovered that earthquakes can be generated also along so called strike-slip faults.
The epicenter of the earthquake was at first located at the point with the largest observed displacement on land – however today the epicenter is believed to be situated below the Pacific Ocean, in accordance to the seismic waves coming from the sea as observed by the first eyewitnesses.
The results of the scientific investigation of the San Francisco earthquake led Henry Fielding Reid, a geology professor at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, to propose a new theory regarding the origin of earthquakes, later dubbed the “theory of elastic rebound“. Reid’s hypothesis will have a revolutionary impact on the young field of seismology.

Bibliography:

SLAVICEK, L.C. (2008): The San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906. Great Historic Disasters. Chelsea House Publishers: 128
STARR, J.D. (1907): The California Earthquake of 1906. A.M. Robertson, San Francisco

Fig.1. One of the many icebergs photographed in the morning of April 15, 1912. The passengers on the ship “Prinz Adalbert”, still unaware of the disaster of the previous night, reported later to have noted a “red smear” at the waterline of the white iceberg (image in public domain).

Fig.2. Another iceberg, photographed five days later from board of the German ship “Bremen”, claimed to be the Titanic iceberg based on the vicinity to the location of the disaster and the description of the iceberg according to survivors (image in public domain). An authentic photography of the iceberg that sank the “unsinkable” Titanic was worth lot of money for the eager press.

Fig.3. Photography taken from board of the ship “Birma” of the same iceberg as seen by the passengers of the “Carpathia” – the first ship to approach the scene of the disaster and save the surviving passengers of the Titanic – published at the time in the “Daily Sketch”. This iceberg has in fact some remarkable similarities to the iceberg as described by survivors of the disaster (image in public domain).
Despite the question if one of the photos shows really the culprit iceberg, the remarkably number of spotted icebergs emphasizes the notion that in 1912 a quite impressive number of these white titans reached such southern latitudes.

The icebergs encountered in the North Atlantic originate mainly from the western coasts of Greenland, where ice streams deliver large quantities of ice in the fjords which lead to the Baffin Bay. Every year ten thousands of small and large pieces of irregular shape of ice drop from the front of the glaciers and are pushed by the West Greenland Current slowly to northern latitudes, far away from ship routes. Following first the coast of Greenland this current is diverted by the Canadian coast to the south, forming the Labrador Current that circumnavigates Newfoundland and delivers the iceberg to the warm Gulf Stream. A more than 5.000 km long journey full of obstacles and incessant erosion by the sun, the water and the waves. Only estimated 1 to 2% of large icebergs will after a period of 1-3 years reach latitude 45°N, crossing one of the most important route for ships of the entire Atlantic Ocean.

Fig.4. Schematic diagram of marine currents (blue= cold; red = hot) around Greenland, probable region of origin (West Greenland) and hypothetical trajectory of the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

Apparently in 1912 icebergs were spotted remarkably often in this region and various hypotheses tried to explain this “anomaly”.  The years before 1912 were characterized by mild winters in Europe and possibly the northern Atlantic and it was speculated that the (relative) warm temperatures increased the melting rate and activity of the calving glaciers on Greenland. Also a strengthened Labrador Current, pushing cold water and icebergs much more to the south, was proposed to explain the ice field that in the cold night 100 years ago forced various ships to stop along the Atlantic route. Both  hypotheses are based on the history of SeaSurfaceTemperature (see this diagram by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) which shows a warm and cold period  in 1900-1920.
A recent hypothesis promoted by NG proposes that an exceptional high tide prevented much of the larger icebergs to run aground along the coasts of the Baffin Bay and the Labrador Sea. However considering that this tide occurred just some months before (January 1912) and the average velocity of an iceberg is low (0,7km/h~0,6mph), the Titanic iceberg had to take a straight course to arrive in time for his rendezvous with history – April 14, 1912, at 23:40.

Based on iceberg counts along the shores of Labrador and later in the Atlantic also the year 1912 don’t seem to be necessarily such an anomalous event, but the disaster raised considerably the interest (and maybe perception) of the public for icebergs.

Fig.5. Iceberg counts (estimated before 1912) at 48°N, data compiled from the International Ice Patrol Iceberg Database.

In the days after the disaster bypassing ships encountered and photographed various icebergs. Some eyewitnesses claim to have noted red paint on some of them; however there is no conclusive evidence that one of these spotted white giants is really the iceberg that sank the Titanic. At least some weeks later the iceberg, captured by the warm water of the Gulf Stream, disappeared forever into the Atlantic Ocean.

Bibliography:

EATON, J.P. & HAAS, C.A. (1986): Titanic Triumph and Tragedy. Haynes Publishing: 352
SOUTH, C. et al. (2006): The Iceberg That Sank the Titanic. The Natural World documentary film – BBC

In the year 1816 Europe was slowly recovering from the Napoleonic wars, ended just one year earlier. After years of desperation and destruction people hoped for better times – but the summer that came was rainy and cold and on the fields the crops did not mature or rotted away, famine and diseases were the consequences. Also the north-eastern states of the U.S. experienced snowstorms and frost in the middle of summer. The year 1816 has come to be known as the “year without a summer.“

Fig.1. Development of costs in the years 1816-17 of important articles of food in Europe. Especially crops and bread, essential for the large and poor populations on the continent, experienced a massive increase in costs due the failed harvests. Meat was still a precious resource available only to a limited group of persons at the time; the reduced livestock therefore could still satisfy the demand (modified after ABEL 1974).

The strange behaviour of the weather was unexplainable at the time. Nobody could imagine that the origins of the strange phenomena were to be found on the opposite side of earth, where an entire mountain had annihilated itself in the largest volcanic eruption of recorded history.

The estimated 4.000m high volcano of Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia erupted with an intensity of VEI 7 – 100x stronger than Mount St. Helens. During the peak of eruption April 10, 1815 the mountain lost 1.300m height and catapulted estimated two million tons of debris, particles and sulphur components into the higher layers of the atmosphere. These aerosols reduced the solar radiation on earth’s surface and influenced worldwide weather patterns for years to come (an exhaustive list of data can be found on Erik Klemetti´s Eruptions-Blog).
Thousands of people died by the direct effects of the four month lasting eruption, like poisonous clouds and gas, large pyroclastic flows and tsunamis. In the surrounding area of the volcano the vegetation was killed and the soil poisoned for years. Many more suffered from the climatic effects and the aftermath. Almost the entire northern hemisphere, in a period with already cool climate, experienced an ulterior drop of temperatures, famine and diseases spread over the world.

Fig.2. Possible depiction of the eruption of the Tambora, references unknown (I would be glad for information).

Only one year later a detailed account of the catastrophe was published first in the “History of Java” (1817) by the English governor of Indonesia and naturalist Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (1781-1826) and later incorporated in Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” (1850):

“Island of Sumbawa, 1815. – In April, 1815, one of the most frightful eruptions recorded in history occurred in the province of Tomboro, in the island of Sumbawa, about 200 miles from the eastern extremity of Java.
In the April of the year preceding the volcano had been observed in a state of considerable activity, ashes having fallen upon the decks of vessels which sailed past the coast. The eruption of 1815 began on the 5th of April, but was most violent on the 11th and 12th, and did not entirely cease till July.
The sound of the explosions was heard in Sumatra, at the distance of 970 geographical miles in a direct line; and at Ternate, in an opposite direction, at the distance of 720 miles. Out of a population of 12,000, in the province of Tomboro, only twenty-six individuals survived.
Violent whirlwinds carried up men, horses, cattle, and whatever else came within their influence, into the air; tore up the largest trees by the roots, and covered the whole sea with floating timber. Great tracts of land were covered by lava, several streams of which, issuing from the crater of the Tomboro mountain, reached the sea.
So heavy was the fall of ashes, that they broke into the Resident’s house at Bima, forty miles east of the volcano, and rendered it, as well as many other dwellings in the town, uninhabitable. On the side of Java the ashes were carried to the distance of 300 miles, and 217 towards Celebes, in sufficient quantity to darken the air. The floating cinders to the westward of Sumatra formed, on the 12th of April, a mass two feet thick, and several miles in extent, through which ships with difficulty forced their way.
The darkness occasioned in the daytime by the ashes in Java was so profound, that nothing equal to it was ever witnessed in the darkest night. Although this volcanic dust when it fell was an impalpable powder, it was of considerable weight when compressed, a pint of it weighing twelve ounces and three quarters.
“Some of the finest particles,” says Mr. Crawfurd, “were transported to the islands of Amboyna and Banda, which last is about 800 miles east from the site of the volcano, although the south-east monsoon was then at its height.” They must have been projected, therefore, into the upper regions of the atmosphere, where a counter current prevailed.
Along the sea-coast of Sumbawa, and the adjacent isles, the sea rose suddenly to the height of from two to twelve feet, a great wave rushing up the estuaries, and then suddenly subsiding. Although the wind at Bima was still during the whole time, the sea rolled in upon the shore, and filled the lower parts of the houses with water a foot deep. Every prow and boat was forced from the anchorage, and driven on shore.
The town called Tomboro, on the west side of Sumbawa, was overflowed by the sea, which encroached upon the shore so that the water remained permanently eighteen feet deep in places where there was land before. Here we may observe, that the amount of subsidence of land was apparent, in spite of the ashes, which would naturally have caused the limits of the coast to be extended.
The area over which tremulous noises and other volcanic effects extended, was 1000 English miles in circumference, including the whole of the Molucca Islands, Java, a considerable portion of Celebes, Sumatra, and Borneo. In the island of Amboyna, in the same month and year, the ground opened, threw out water, and then closed again.
In conclusion, I may remind the reader, that but for the accidental presence of Sir Stamford Raffles, then governor of Java, we should scarcely have heard in Europe of this tremendous catastrophe. He required all the residents in the various districts under his authority to send in a statement of the circumstances which occurred within their own knowledge; but, valuable as were their communications, they are often calculated to excite rather than to satisfy the curiosity of the geologist. They mention, that similar effects, though in a less degree, had, about seven years before, accompanied an eruption of Carang Assam, a volcano in the island of Bali, west of Sumatra; but no particulars of that great catastrophe are recorded.“

Bibliography:

ABEL, W. (1974): Massenarmut und Hungerkrisen im vorindustriellen Europa. Versuch einer Synopsis. Hamburg-Berlin: 427
BOER, de J.Z. & SANDERS, D.T. (2002): Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions. Princeton University Press: 295
OPPENHEIMER, C. (2011): Eruptions that Shook the World. Cambridge University Press: 392

Italy has a long and tragic history of earthquakes. The position between two large continental plates (the European and African) and various micro-plates of the Mediterranean Sea results in highly active seismicity all over the peninsula.
The first map of seismicity of the Mediterranean area and an extensive research on earthquakes in Italy was published in 1857 by the Irish engineer – and self educated geologist – Robert Mallet under the title “Great Neapolitan Earthquake- The First Principles of Observational Seismology“. Mallet got interested in earthquakes in 1830 by a drawing in a natural sciences book, displaying two stone columns twisted by an earthquake in Calabria. He decided to study the forces able to do this to human constructions. In his work he noted that damages on buildings were distributed in distinct areas, setting out from a point of heaviest destruction. These points, the epicentre of an earthquake, were not randomly distributed, but found in “seismic belts” following the Apennine Mountains.

Earthquakes mark the history of the area surrounding L’Aquila and the province of Abruzzo. Historic events or swarms of trembles are recorded for 1315, 1349, 1452, 1461, 1498, 1501, 1646, 1703, 1706, 1791, 1809, 1848 and 1887. One of the most important earthquakes occurred February 2, 1703, causing devastation across much of central Italy and destroying the city of L’Aquila, killing 5.000 people.

The destruction caused by the earthquake of 2009 surprised experts and generated discussions about the anti-seismic building standards adopted in Italy. While most of the medieval structures in rural areas collapsed or were heavily damaged, in L’Aquila most concern arouse from the observation that modern buildings suffered the greatest damage and that the death toll included mostly young people. L’Aquila was a university town and cheap accommodations which suffered severe damage were inhabited by students, also many students died when a dormitory at the University of L’Aquila collapsed. Even some buildings, believed to be “earthquake-proof”, collapsed, like parts of the new hospital and various buildings of the government.

Fig.1. The local prefecture damaged by the earthquake, emblem of the situation in Italy, image from Wikipedia-User TheWiz83 May 7, 2009.

In rural areas the “core” of most of the historic buildings consisted of local material, like stone, superimposed by cement constructions or supplementary floors of recent age. It was this mismatch that caused the collapse of these buildings. In L’Aquila the earthquake of 1703 destroyed most of the older buildings. During reconstruction work first “anti-seismic standards” were introduced – the rebuild houses possessed thicker walls, improved joints between floors and the allowed height of the building was limited.
Many “modern” buildings of the city in contrast were build previously of 1984, before modern anti-seismic buildings standards were introduced in Italy.
However there was and still is a widespread disregard of building standards and the ignorance by people and (in part corrupt) authorities of the seismic hazards. Many concrete elements of the collapsed buildings (like the hospital) “seemed to have been made poorly, possibly with sand“, a common tactic to build fast and cheap by building enterprises controlled by criminal organisations.
The earthquake of L’Aquila was therefore only in part a natural disaster and the manmade catastrophe was strongly misused by Italian politics and many promises made shortly after the earthquake are still unrealized today.

Most alarming were the legal repercussions of the earthquake on science. Based on a general lack of understanding of science by the public and authorities various persons were accused (“Scientists on trial: At fault?” Nature September 14, 2011) to have ignored “premonitory signs” of the earthquake -  in form of pseudoscientific claims of dubious veracity and “warnings” mostly published by individuals in the internet.

Bibliography:

TERTULLIANI, A. (2011): Il segni del terremoto sul tessuto urbano. DARWIN No. 42 Marzo/Aprile: 80-83
WALKER, B. (1982): Earthquake. Planet Earth. Time Life Books: 154

Only a year later some workers discovered strange bones in a gravel pit near the village of Piltdown in southern Sussex. They consigned the bones to the local lawyer, antiquarian and amateur geologist Charles Dawson.
Dawson initiated with the help of Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of the Geological Department at the British Museum, a private prospection campaign in the gravel pit. Dawson already had experience in digging up fossils, many of which he donated to the museum, and he was a respected fellow of the Geological Society.
Between June and September 1912 several fragments of a human skull, along with bones of Pleistocene animals, like elephant, mastodon and beaver, were discovered. Finally during a “warm summer evening” (Woodward) the two men found a jaw, fitting to the human skull.

Woodward worked secretly on the reconstruction of the entire skull. It resembled that of modern man, except for the part where the skull is attached to the spinal cord and the slightly smaller cranial capacity, with an estimated brain volume of 1070ccm (about two-third of modern humans). The jaw was indistinguishable from that of a modern, young chimpanzee, except by the presence of two molars identical to human ones.

December 18, 1912 Woodward presented the reconstruction to a large audience and suggested that the fossil – dubbed by the press later Piltdown Man – represents an evolutionary missing link between ape and man, since the combination of a large brain with the jaw of a monkey seemed to support the notion that the main characteristic of human evolution was the early development of a large brain. The reconstruction was harshly criticized, especially by non-british anthropologists and archaeologists.
Many of these experts noted that the fragments didn’t fit or even necessarily belonged together.  The anatomist Arthur Keith at the Royal College of Surgeons produced a reconstruction quite identical to a modern man (Homo piltdownensis). Marcellin Boule, a French archaeologist, affirmed in 1921 that the remains belong to two different species – if it was not entirely a hoax. This conclusion was supported by the American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller, who attributed the jaw to a still unknown species of chimpanzee, informally named Pan vetus. The German anthropologist Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and reasserted that the presumed fossil was simply a modern human skull and an orang-utan jaw with manipulated teeth.
But in the end there were no conclusive evidence to assert that the entire story was a fake and the British scientific community accepted the new species as Eoanthropus dawsoni.
Over the years further discoveries were made at Piltdown: bones of animals, a bone tool that resembled a cricket bat (!) and supposedly two more skulls. It was in 1915 that Dawson claimed to have found fragments of a second skull (called Piltdown II) in a not specified locality; however Woodward himself seems never to have visited this supposed site. Dawson died in August 1916, leaving Woodward with the heredity of Piltdown, who in 1917 continued to present material to support the alleged Piltdown Man.

Fig.1. A typical missing link.

However in the next three decades discoveries on the African continent seemed to contradict the hypothesis based on the genus Eoanthropus. Ancient biped hominids were found only in Africa and the cranial capacity of these species did not differ significantly from those of chimpanzees – bipedalism evolved before a large brain.

In October 1948 the geologist Kenneth Oakley decided to apply a new dating method and analyzed the fluorine concentration in the bones of the Pleistocene animals found at Piltdown. While the bones contained up to 3% fluorine, the Piltdown skull showed a concentration of just 0,2%, it was not possible that both the bones as the skull lay underground side by side for thousands of years.

This seemed the end of the Piltdown Man, but in light of recent discoveries on the evolution of humans some scientists re-evaluated the status of Eoanthropus dawsoni. The fossil bones of Homo floresiensis of Indonesia, the genetic analysis of the human remains of Denisova in Siberia, controversial early H. sapiens teeth discovered in Israel and bones of an unknown hominid from China have shown that the early model of a unique migration wave out from Africa, which lead to our modern species, was too simple. It is however possible that diverse migration waves occurred over time and that single populations of hominids evolved separately in various forms – this could possibly explain also the repeated sightings of large biped and apelike creatures all around the world in recent times, evolved parallel to – and hiding from – us.

For Eoanthropus this means that it is possibly a descendant of a late migration wave, as supported by the relative young age inferred by the low concentration of fluorine. The strange combination of a large skull and an apelike chin is according to the hypothesis of Professor Shlibovitz, one of the leading experts of missing links, an atavistic phenomenon – “primitive” characteristics of ancestors still encoded in the DNA re-emerging in more recent species, like legs on whales. Absolutely coincidentally today also other important missing links, ignored until now by science, are discussed on “Tetrapod Zoology“.
The preliminary results of the new research, announced in February 2012, and the official (re)recognition of the species Eoanthropus dawsoni can be accessed for free following this link.

In the late afternoon of March 27, 1964 Alaska was shaken for five minutes by one of the strongest earthquakes ever to be recorded in modern times, with a magnitude of 8.3 – 9.2 after Richter (the earthquake was so strong that no seismometer in the affected area recorded it correctly).
The earthquake displaced almost the entire southern coast of Alaska along the Prince William Sound, some areas were raised by 9 meters (30 feet) above the sea level, other level dropped below sea level and became inundated later by the sea (maybe the Yurok myth is based on the observation of such a similar environmental change after an earthquake in prehistoric times along the western coast of the U.S.).

Video 1. Showing the “Ghost Forest” of the 1964 ´quake. In the lowered regions the trees were killed by the salt water, later deposited marsh sediments again raised the surface and tundra vegetation recolonized the area.

The earthquake caused heavy damage on 75% of buildings and infrastructure in the affected area, most in the city of Anchorage, 131 people were killed.
Large fissures opened in the ground when the groundwater liquefied the soil and more than 2.000 landslides and avalanches occurred across south-central Alaska. Buildings in Seattle (Washington) begun to swing by the approaching seismic wave and the ground was measurable deformed even in Florida.

Fig.1. Rockslide – avalanche on Sherman Glacier. The source was from the area marked by the fresh scar on Shattered Peak (top center image). Photo by A. Post / image in public domain from the U.S.G.S. Photographic Library.

In some lakes in Alaska the movement of the water catapulted chunks of ice onto the land, causing damage on the surrounding trees up to 9 meters (30 feet) above ground. Unusual water movements, attributed cautiously to the earthquake, were observed in South Dakota and apparently even in Puerto Rico and Australia.
Most remarkable was the generated tsunami, waves higher than usual were observed even along the Japanese coast. The seaport of Valdez was destroyed by a 30 meter high tsunami, 32 people died there. For hours after the earthquake the sea was tumultuous and in the evening with the high tide the reflected waves of the first tsunami inundated the surviving area of the city of Valdez.
Six hours after the earthquake the tsunami reached the coasts of Vancouver Island, one hour later the coast of Oregon and the wave caused damage even in Crescent City and Los Angeles (California).

Fig.2. Aerial photographs of destructive landslides and damage in Anchorage, Photo by A. Grantz / image in public domain from the U.S.G.S. Photographic Library.

Many of these phenomena were studied for the very first time by scientists – only two hours after the earthquake the first geologists arrived to Anchorage.

Bibliography:

Committee on the Alaska Earthquake of the Division of Earth Sciences National Research Council (1968): The Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964. National Academy of Sciences, Washington: 473
GATES, A.E. & RITCHIE, D. (2007): Encyclopedia of earthquakes and Volcanoes. Facts on file science library. 3th ed. New York: 346
WALKER, B. (1982): Earthquake. Planet Earth. Time Life Books: 154

As charming this account is, it is probably not a true myth but a story told for the first tourists visiting the site, as there is no mention of it in historic documents or collections of Irish folklore. Today the legendary formation of the “Giant’s Causeway” is understood much better. When the Antrim basalt started to cool down the crystallizing rock contracted in volume, forming joints resembling a hexagonal pattern on the surface of the former lava flow.

The first mention of the “Giant’s causeway” was published in an anonymous travel account in 1693. Travelling around the rural Irish landscape was an arduous task at the time and scholars intrigued by the first descriptions of this strange site preferred to send artists there, instructed to produce a realistic representation of the scenery. Apparently the first results were very deluding, as the scholar Reverend William Hamilton remarks in 1786:

“Neither the talents nor the fidelity of the artist seem to have been at all suited to the purpose of the philosophical landscape . . . . In this true prospect, the painter has very much indulged his own imagination…[]“

Fig.1. The first published image of the Giant’s Causeway by local artist Christopher Cole Foley was used to illustrate an account by Samuel Foley, Bishop of Down and Connor, in 1694. However both the drawing and the engraving from it were considered inadequate depictions of this peculiar Irish landscape (image in public domain).

The Dublin Society decided to offer an award for the most realistic and scientific accurate illustration of the Giant’s Causeway. In 1740 the prize was won by Dublin artist Susanna Drury, who spent three months along the Irish coast to study the landscape and produce two paintings (a view from the east and a view from the west) of the Giant’s Causeway. These paintings were used as reference for various later engravings and illustrations and significantly increased the interest of the people in this geologic formation, today one of the most popular landscape in Northern Ireland and designated as World Heritage site by the UNESCO in 1986.

Fig.2. An engraving of 1768 based on the original painting by Susanna Drury “East Prospect of the Giant’s Causeway” (image in public domain).

Bibliography:

DOUGHTY, P. (2008): How things began: the origins of geological conservation. From: BUREK, C. V. & PROSSER, C. D. (eds) The History of Geoconservation. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 300:7-16

Written records of strong earthquakes date back at least 1.600 years. Until 1860 however Japanese naturalists were less interested in exploring the cause of earthquakes than the effects of such an extraordinary event and mythical explanations prevailed.

In the year 1600 the Japanese nobleman Tokugawa Ieyasu choose the village of Edo (modern Tokyo) as his new residence and three years later it was the capital of the unified Japan. The city rapidly grew and soon reached hundreds of thousands of inhabitants – one of the largest cities at the time. Unfortunately this strategic position at the bay of Tokyo was and is still today a seismic active area.

Fig.1. Copper engraving published in 1669 by an anonymous European artist, possibly illustrating an earthquake in Edo in the year 1650. It is not clear if the artist experienced the earthquake himself or based this figure on eyewitnesses’ accounts, nevertheless it is one of the oldest known illustrations of a Japanese earthquake (image in public domain).

December 31, 1703 Japan was hit by a strong earthquake with a reconstructed intensity of 8 after the Mercalli-scale. In Edo most of the wood buildings collapsed. The earthquake and its aftermath effects, like floods and fires, killed estimated 150.000 people. More than 6.500 people were killed by a flood wave, which caused havoc in the bay of Sagami and on the peninsula of Boso.

One of the most important historic earthquakes hit Tokyo November 11, 1855, killing 16.000 to 20.000 people. This event and the aftermath are retold by hundreds of woodcuts, especially in the form of a namazu-e.

Fig.2. and 3. Anonymous contemporary woodcuts showing Edo before and after the great Ansei-Edo earthquake (images in public domain; source “Documenting Disaster: Natural Disasters in Japanese History, 1703-2003″, Foundation for Museums of Japanese History, Chiba 2003).

October 28, 1891, the agricultural region of Nobi experienced an earthquake of magnitude 8. Modern buildings and traditional houses were damaged or collapsed, thousands of people lost their homes and 7.000 people were killed.
The English geologists John Milne (1849-1913), who in 1880 founded the Seismologists Society of Japan, studied the effects of this earthquake and published an important monographic work “The great earthquake in Japan, 1891“. The Japanese geologist Bunjiro Koto observed a superficial dislocation during the same event and recognized a fundamental principle in seismology – faults are not the result of an earthquake, but movements along a fault cause the seismic waves.

During the second half of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century scientific research on earthquakes became rapidly established in Japan.
Fusakichi Omori (1868-1923), director of the Seismological Institute of Japan, studied the occurrence of earthquakes around Tokyo and noted in 1922:

“Currently the immediate area of Tokyo is seismically quiet, while in the mountains around Tokyo, in a distance of about 60 kilometres, there are often triggered earthquakes, which – although they are may felt in the capital – are in fact harmless, because the affected areas are not part of a larger destructive seismic zone.
Over time, the seismic activity in these areas will gradually diminish; meanwhile it will increase in the bay of Tokyo and will possibly cause a strong earthquake. An earthquake with an epicentre at some distance from Tokyo will have a local, however destructive impact.“

One year later, September 1, 1923, the city of Yokohama and Tokyo were hit again by an earthquake, today remembered as the Great Kanto- earthquake. More than 99.000 people were killed by the collapse of buildings, a 10 to 12m high tsunami and fires. The bodies of more than 40.000 victims were never found.

Fig.4. “A good idea of the tremendous devastation in Tokyo wrought by earthquake and fire. Enclosed find a few snaps taken on the top of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo which is the only hotel in the earthquake district that survived.” J.H. Messervey, letter dated March 5, 1924; image in public domain from the U.S.G.S. Photographic Library.

June 28, 1948 the American photographer Carl Mydans visited the city of Fukui to document the post-war development of this important industrial region. At 17:14 local time Mydans was surprised by a strong earthquake in the American military base, he remembers:

“The cement of the floor crashed. Dishes and tables were spun into our faces and we all found us involved in a mad dance…[]… when I found myself near the door, I moved into it’s direction. But the floor slipped away under my feet and I rushed against a crumbling wall.“

Mydans turned back to get his camera and in the next fifteen hours documented the desperation and destruction of Fukui. More than 5.131 people were killed. According to Mydans most of the victims perished entrapped under the debris and in the fire after the earthquake. Mydans  later promoted the distribution of emergency tool boxes, equipped with an axe and other heavy utensils to remove debris.

In January 1995 the industrial city of Kobe was hit by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 after Richter, the strongest earthquake in Japan since 1923. More than 6.000 people were killed and more than 300.000 people lost their homes.

Fig.5. Simplified map of Japan showing a selection of earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 7 after Richter in the last 100 years and major historic events (data from U.S.G.S. 2005, earthquake data from “Exploring Africa’s Physical and Cultural Geography using GIS”, see also “Seismicity of the Earth 1900-2007, Japan and Vicinity“).

The devastating tsunami of March 11, 2011 was triggered by the strongest ever recorded earthquake in historic times, still one year later aftershocks are concentrated in the region where it generated.

Bibliography:

BOLT, B.A. (1995): Erdbeben – Schlüssel zur Geodynamik. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Berlin: 219
GUNN, A.M. (2008): Encyclopedia of Disasters – Environmental Catastrophes and Human Tragedies. Vol.1. Greenwood Press, London: 733
KITAHARAK, I. et al. (2003): Documenting Disaster, Natural Disasters in Japanese History, 1703-2003. Nat. Museum of Japanese History, Chiba.
KOZAK, J. & CERMAK, V. (2010): The Illustrated History of Natural Disasters. Springer-Verlag: 203

Fig.1. The god Kashima immobilizes a guilty Namazu, demonstrating to a group of smaller catfishes, representing earthquakes of the past, the severe punishment for their behaviour. The catfishes explain their misbehaviour as results of their envy to other fish species, much more appreciated and popular in traditional Japanese cooking (image in public domain).

Namazu depictions are known since the fifteenth century, however only in the late eighteenth century he became associated with natural disasters. In the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) the giant catfish was as a river deity associated with floods or heavy rainfall. He acts often as a premonition for danger, warns people from an imminent catastrophe or swallows dangerous water-dragons, preventing further disasters. The dragon was a very old and powerful symbol, imported from China, and was considered the main culprit of many sorts of disasters, including earthquakes. During the 18th century the giant namazu gradually replaces the dragon in the role as mischief-maker. This change from the dragon to Namazu was minor, because dragons were also associated to water and rivers and therefore considered closely related to the catfish myth.

During the 19th century and especially after the earthquake of Edo (modern Tokyo) in October 1855 the wrongdoings of Namazu were considered more a punishment of human greed, as it was believed that the catfish by causing havoc forces people to redistribute equally their accumulated wealth. Namazu became known as yonaoshi daimyojin, the “god of world rectification“.

Fig.2. Namazu-e showing yonaoshi daimyojin perpetuating a traditional suicide (“seppuku namazu”, 1855) – with his sacrifice he will provide money, dropping from his belly, for the poor people seen in the background of the image. The scene is supervised by the god Kashima. Some of these anonymous images possess also great magical powers, promising protection from earthquakes and “10.000 years of fortune” (image in public domain).

The classic namazu-e (more than 300 are today known) were a response of the Edo earthquake – by trying to depict also “positive aspects” (the redistribution of wealth) of the earthquake the artists hoped to rise the morals of the survivors. The figure of Namazu was used also in satire; he is shown as a coward hiding from the responsibility of disaster relief, a reference to the aristocracy and incompetent civil servants.

Fig.3. A Namazu, representing the earthquake of Edo (modern Tokyo) in October 1855, is attacked by peasants and concubines, however in the background help for the catfish is approaching – craftsmen, who will take profit from the reconstruction of the city. The earthquake of Edo, which killed thousand of inhabitants, coincided with the traditional “month without gods”, believed a period when all of the gods gather in a secret temple. Taking advantage of the absence of Kashima, the coward Namazu causes destruction and sorrows in the human world (image in public domain).

Fig.4. A picture by the Japanese artist Kadzusa-ya Iwazô of 1842 lampooning the myth of Namazu: a Tanuki (a sort of mythical raccoon-dog with the ability to enlarge voluntarily parts of his body) is subduing the catfish with his giant scrotum (figure from Kuniyoshi Project; Copyright © 2006 – 2011 William Pearl, non – commercial use granted).

There exist also other versions of the myth, in some stories Kashima doesn’t use a rock, but a sword to nail the Namazu onto the ground. According to another version it is the god Kadori controlling the catfish, using a giant pumpkin. Also the main villain can be represented by a giant eel – Jinshin-Uwo – or the giant dragon-beetle Jinshin-Mushi.

Bibliography:

KOZAK, J. & CERMAK, V. (2010): The Illustrated History of Natural Disasters. Springer: 203
LEWIS, T.A. (ed) (1985): Volcano (Planet Earth). Time-Life Books: 176

Online Resources:

SMITS, G. (): Earthquakes in Japanese History. (Accessed 10.02.2012)

“A lady going into the quarries is a signal for the men to beg money for beer, and the few times I have been there I never got a specimen worth bringing home. All my Portland fossils have been purchased in Weymouth!“

A second accepted possibility for a woman to engage in earth sciences was following her husband, father or brother in the field and acting as a sort of “geological assistant”:

“After the last Geological Society meeting of the spring season, the leading researchers gathered up their hammers and their wives and set off on extensive stratigraphical tours.” (SECORD 1990)

One major “excuse” to prevent women engaging in geology included the field gear, considered inappropriate for a women.
The fully equipped geologist was sometimes a reason for distrust by the local people. If he dressed poorly or returned from field work covered with dirt or dust, it could happen that he got arrested as a tramp. When he appeared dressy, like a rich gentleman, there was the danger to become a victim of robbery or even murder. In every case a male geologist had to wear cylinder and tailcoat in the field and women dressed according to the most recent fashion, with “cages” and “horrid iron girdles ´round their legs“, as geologist Roderick Murchison notes on his wife Charlotte Hugonin in 1850, who accompanied him during his fieldtrips.
The depiction by geologist Henry De la Beche of Mary Anning gives us a good impression how a woman geologist dressed at these times:

“Hammer in hand; Mary is depicted wearing sturdy boots or clogs, heavy clothing and a top hat, the protective clothing of a working-class woman. Top hats, made of felted wool repeatedly coated with shellac until quite stiff, might appear oddly formal today, but they were the crash helmets of the time and were worn by many geologists when they were doing fieldwork in order to provide protection from falling rocks.” (GOODHUE 2005)

Fig. 1. Cartoon by Henry Thomas De la Beche of Mary Anning working in protective gear (image in public domain).

The discrimination based on the clothing persisted until the middle of the 19th century. With the introduction of sports gear and the increasing acceptance by society of geologists appearance and behaviour soon more practically wardrobe became prevalent and also women could move more freely, explore the Madness of a Subduction Zone and engage in Environmental Geology.

Bibliography:

BUREK, C.V. & KÖLBL-EBERT, M. (2007): The historical problems of travel for women undertaking geological fieldwork. In BUREK, C. V. & HIGGS, B. (eds): The Role of Women in the History of Geology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 281: 115-122
GOODHUE, T.W. (2005): Mary Anning: the fossilist as exegete. Endeavour Vol.29 (1): 28-32
SECORD, J.A. (1990): Controversy in Victorian Geology: The Cambrian-Silurian Dispute. Princeton University Press, Princeton: 301

Asked to explain a natural disaster, most people trained in physical sciences will probably describe how plate tectonics cause earthquakes or how climate change affects floods or droughts. However such definitions neglect the most important factor that distinguishes a natural event from a disaster: the human component and how an event can impact society. An earthquake in an uninhabited desert, even if interesting for the geologist, will have little repercussion on humans. An earthquake in a densely populated area can disrupt not only the local infrastructure and economy, but in our globalized world cause also repercussions on a worldwide scale. A small community with limited resources (like Haiti in 2010) will be affected stronger by an event than a large and rich society, which can more easily replace lost goods or workforce. It becomes clear from these considerations that to understand environmental hazards and risk it is necessary to consider not only the physical forces behind a natural event, but also how humans perceive, react to and try to mitigate the effects of such an event.

Textbooks that approach disasters from such an interdisciplinary approach are still rare or accessible only to experts on the subject.
“Environmental Hazards and Disasters” tries to close this gap by providing an intermediate level text based on the teaching experience of the author Dr. Bimal K. Paul (Kansas State University).

The book is subdivided in 8 independent main chapters with further subdivision discussing specific concepts. This structure allows an easy “navigation” and the reader can skip directly to a specific topic of interest.
The first two chapters provide a general introduction in the classification of disasters and a historic overview on disaster research, including modern applications of Geographic Information Systems. The following chapters 3 to 7 introduce and discuss a broad array of specific concepts of disaster research, from environmental terrorism to risk communication, from mitigation measures to problems of disaster relief. The author succeeds to convey this apparently “dry theory material” by showing the application of the theory with examples and scenarios of recent disaster from all over the world. He also convincingly describes the problems of managing disasters based on his experience or investigation of specific events, like Hurricane Katrina in 2005 or historic floods in Bangladesh. Every chapter ends with an exhaustive list of published studies and provides references for further research; maybe online sources are a bit underrepresented – considering also that the book addresses today students, even more familiar using internet than the reviewer.
The eighth chapter stands apart and discuss two interesting topics in greater detail: disasters and gender vulnerability (woman are generally more vulnerable to a disaster, mostly due sociological factors) and – as sort of summary of the entire book – the possible effects of climate change on Bangladesh (the native country of the author) and the actions that should be undertaken by both the local government and global politics.

The text is accompanied only by few black and white images (diagrams, maps) and photos, which feel almost unrelated to the text due the quite random objects showed (for example wind turbines in the chapter of climate change) and general captions. The limited use of illustrations or maps diminishes the accessibility and the understanding of some of the discussed statistic or geospatial data. Especially the written description of geographical information (for example sea-level rise and population density along coasts) results in longer paragraphs that could be easily replaced by more “readable” geographic maps.

The book was written for students attending hazard courses, however students and professionals in related sciences (like Geography, Geology, Engineering, Sociology, Economy, Politics, Journalism and Psychology), who wish to obtain a fast overview and summary on the complex relationship of hazards and society, or refresh their knowledge, will profit from consulting it.

DISCLAIMER: This review is based on a copy of “Environmental Hazards and Disasters” kindly provided by the publisher, however I have no affiliation with the publisher or author; the review reflects my personal opinion on the discussed book.
Image Copyright Wiley-Blackwell, used here under Fair Use conditions for review purpose.

Insects are the most successful multicellular animals on earth today and there is no reason to assume that in the geological past this situation was very different. Some groups have also successfully adapted to blood-sucking habits.
Blood-sucking insects include various groups. One of the largest is the group of the “flies” (Diptera), more specific the mosquitoes (Culicidae), the snipe flies (Rhagionidae), the athericid flies (Athericidae), the blackflies (Simuliidae), the biting midges (Ceratopogonids), the sand flies (Phlebotominae) and the horse flies (Tabanidae) as most important and well-known examples.
Fleas and lice are the second largest group of obligatory blood feeders. Also some bugs of the Heteroptera have evolved a taste for blood.
Even if there is no direct evidence that the ancestors of these insects feed on dinosaurs, like a paleo-flea fossilised on a dinosaur, the contemporaneity of these groups and dinosaurs makes it highly probable that the insects did benefit from the presence of such large animals.
Imprints of dinosaur-skin show that some species were covered with scutes or scales, other species possessed scales or tubercles embedded probably in a thin skin and finally some dinosaurs were covered with bristles, filaments, proto-feathers and feathers.  In every case these various types of skin did not provided always an impenetrable wall against all sorts of blood-sucking organisms.

Not all insects that bite need blood to feed themselves, as some species use blood only in certain growth phases or for egg production. Some insects are generalists and will attack all sorts of cold-blooded or warm-blooded animals, like fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Other are more specialized and prefer single groups or specific species.
Insects, despite the common claim, don’t bite, but scratch or cut the skin with specific structures of their mouthparts. Mosquitoes then directly punctuate a blood vessel and suck the blood from it (so called capillary-feeders). Other insects – like blackflies, biting midges, sand flies and horse flies – lacerate the blood vessels and then lick the blood that accumulates in the wound (pool-feeders).

Mosquitoes (Culicidae) are the most familiar group of the blood-sucking insect, however they are quite rare in the fossil record and only single specimens confirm their presence during the Cretaceous. Most of the recent forms are opportunists, as they will attack whatever host is available, even if they prefer mammals and birds.

Biting midges (Ceratopogonidae) resemble a tiny version of mosquitoes. This group is commonly found in Cretaceous amber and it is probable that they in the past also targeted dinosaurs. Ceratopogonids today are pool-feeders, they will attack all sorts of vertebrates and concentrate their effort on regions of the body were blood vessels are easily accessible, like the area surrounding the eye or joints, were scales are smaller or the skin thinner.

Blackflies (Simuliidae) are tiny insects like the biting midges. Legends know that large swarms are capable to weakening and even kill animals due the suffered loss of blood.
Fossil remains are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous in Europe, Australia, Asia, and North America. Modern forms are not known to feed on reptiles, but they feed on birds.

Sand flies (Phlebotominae) are probably one of the earliest groups of flies in which some species evolved the ability to suck blood. The primary herbivorous group, feeding on plant sap, evolved during the Cretaceous the habit to feed on animal wounds and later acquired the ability to actively suck blood.  Most of them are general feeders, feeding on all sorts of vertebrates. However some species prefer lizards and snakes and have no problem to reach the soft skin under the overlapping scales.

Horse flies and deer flies of the family Tabanidae were widespread throughout the Cretaceous and are today strong, persistent flyers and pool-feeders on both warm- and cold-blooded animals.
Their “bite” is nasty and often where the insect feed a painful wheal develops. Today at least four species of horseflies are known to prey on crocodiles and anacondas in the Amazon, also turtles and birds can not escape their attacks.

Fleas (Siphonaptera) and lice (Phthiraptera) today thrive under the protection of hairs and feathers on both mammals and bird and it seems reasonable to assume that they or similar organisms could also accept feathered dinosaurs as hosts.

Fleas or flea-like insects, like Strashila incredibilis, have been described from Mesozoic sediments. Strashila incredibilis is characterized by large claws and well developed hind legs, used maybe to improve the grip on feathers or bristles.
Another Mesozoic flea-like insect (it is tentatively attributed to Mecoptera, a group possibly related to true fleas) is the species Saurophthirus longipes. The prolonged proboscis, the large claws and long legs have been interpretated as modifications for parasitic behaviour on pterosaur wings or to grasp the borders of large dinosaur scales.
The oldest true fleas seem to be the new described specimens from the Jurassic of China. It is interesting to note that the mouthparts of these fleas are exceptionally well developed, maybe to be able to deal with the resistant skin of reptiles and dinosaurs. In case of “reptilian” skinned dinosaurs however it must be noted that modern fleas try to avoid reptiles as hosts, probably due the lack of shelter on the scaly skin.

Lice are highly specialized parasites of mammals and birds and are subdivided in two groups based on their feeding behaviour: the biting (Mallophaga) and sucking (Anoplura) type. The second group feeds exclusively on mammalian blood, while the Mallophaga feed on feathers, hair, skin and blood of birds.
Fossil lice are rare findings. One of the most strange fossils is the species Saurodectes , described from the early Cretaceous of Siberia and supposedly identified as large (14mm) lice living on dinosaurs or pterosaurs.

Bibliography:

BREHM, A.E. (1892): Insekten, Tausendfüßer und Spinnen. Brehms Tierleben Bd.9. Ernst Ludwig Taschenberg (all images taken from this book, images in public domain)
GRIMALDI, D. A. & ENGEL, M. S. (2005): Evolution of the Insects. Cambridge University Press: 755
POINAR, G. & POINAR, R. (2007): What Bugged the Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease, and Death in the Cretaceous. Princeton University Press: 296
RASNITSYN, A.P. & QUICKE, D.L.J. (eds.) (2002): History of insects. Kluwer Academic Press: 517

The 19th century Victorian Empire was characterized by a vivid interest in natural sciences and especially geology. It was a time of radical ideas and controversial new hypothesis, like the origin of rocks or fossils and the Ice Age theory.  When direct criticism to a particular idea wasn’t possible due gentleman’s agreement, some researchers adopted an intriguing method to criticize a hypothesis or theoretical position of a fellow geologist.

The eminent British gentleman Sir Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796-1855) was one of the most prolific geologists of his time. His published works span from the description of fossil marine reptiles to the study of the British stratigraphy and various textbooks dealing with the application of geological survey methods. However he is best known by the public for his passion and talent for cartoons and caricatures. One of the most famous caricatures, still reproduced today in many geology textbooks, was drawn by De la Beche in 1830, the same year the geologist Sir Charles Lyell published his groundbreaking “Principles of Geology.”

The prominent “Professor Ichthyosaurus“, depicted in the cartoon entitled “Awful Changes“, was considered for a long time to be inspired by the eccentric figure of geologist Reverend William Buckland (1784-1856) and his unusual teaching methods. The caricature was widely publicized in Francis Buckland‘s (1826-80) book-series “Curiosities of Natural History” (1857-72), in part a collection of strange natural phenomena and in part a biography of his fathers’ life. The explanation that De la Beche provided the caricature for his good friend and the son’s book seemed therefore reasonable.

Fig.1. “Awful Changes. Man Found only in a Fossil State – Reappearance of Ichthyosauri.” – “A lecture, – ‘You will at once perceive,’ continued Professor Ichthyosaurus, ‘that the skull before us belonged to some of the lower order of animals; the teeth are very insignificant, the power of the jaws trifling, and altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food.” The caricature by De la Beches of “Prof. Ichthyosaurus” on the pages of Francis Trevelyan Buckland (Son of William Buckland) “Curiosities of Natural History” (image in public domain).

However the geologist and dedicated earth-science historian Martin J.S. Rudwick realized the connection of this scene with some drawings produced before 1831 by De la Beche in his diary, where he ridiculed the approach to geology as adopted by Sir Charles Lyell. In De la Beche´s diary a lawyer (the reference to Lyell, who actually was a lawyer, seems obvious) is carrying a bag with “his” theory around the world, or he is shown wearing particular glasses (like Professor Ichthyosaurus), and offering this “worldview” and the resulting “theoretical approach” to a geologist carrying a hammer, a reference to the applied field geologist like De la Beche.
De la Beche could not overcome his prejudice against Lyell as a lawyer, which he considered much more a geo-egghead then a real field-geologist.
So “Awful Changes” does in fact lampoon Lyell’s uniformitarianism. Lyell rejected the prevalent idea of a young earth shaped by sudden unexplainable catastrophes. Not disasters and rapid changes formed the earth, but slow processes like deposition and erosion. These processes needed thousands, if not millions of years, to reshape the entire earth.
Lyell also adopts the idea of geological time as a cycle. He compares the history of the earth and the climatic changes that have occurred in the past with a “geologic year” – with fall, winter, spring and summer – as ordered and similar to the cyclical movements of earth around the sun.
Animal and plant species were perfectly adapted to these “geological seasons”. When a “geological” season ended, some animal and plant species did diminish in abundance, meanwhile others flourished. This pattern was reversible at any time and according to Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” so it was therefore possible that:

“Then might those genera of animals return, of which the memorials are preserved in the ancient rocks of our continents. The huge iguanodon might reappear in the woods, and the ichthyosaur in the sea, while the pterodactyl might flit again through the umbrageous groves of tree ferns.“

It is this passage that inspired De la Beche´s famous caricature of “Professor Ichthyosaurus” complaining about the awful changes that geology experienced at the time…

Bibliography:

CLARY, M.R. & WANDERSEE, J.H. (2010): Scientific Caricatures in the Earth Science Classroom: An Alternative Assessment for Meaningful Science Learning. Science & Education 19:21-37
GORDON, E.O. (1894): The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland. John Murray, London
HALLAM, A. (1998): Lyell’s views on organic progression, evolution and extinction. In: BLUNDELL, D. J. & SCOTT, A. C. (eds) Lyell: the Past is the Key to the Present. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 143: 133-136.
LEEDER, M.R: (1998): Lyell’s Principles of Geology: foundations of sedimentology. Geological Society, London, Special Publications 143: 95-110
RUDWlCK, M. S. (1975): Caricature as Source for the History of Science: DE LA BECHE’S Anti-Lyellian Sketches of 1831. Isis, Vol. 66 (234): 534-560
RUDWICK, M.J.S. (2008): Worlds before Adam – The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform. The University of Chicago Press: 614

Online Resources:

SCOTT, M. (1996-2010): The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology: Henry De la Beche. (Accessed 13.10.2010)
NAPIER, J. (1976): O rare Frank Buckland! New Scientist 16 December 1976: 647-649

“WHEN on board HMS ‘Beagle,’ as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species-that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.“

Fig.1. Young Darwin’s encounter with the ghosts of ancient beasts, as imagined by fellow-blogger & science-artist Glendon Mellow on his blog “The Flying Trilobite” (image used with permission of the author). The bones emerging from the sediments seemed those of ancient monsters and yet show a surprising resemblance to animals still living. For Darwin this was more than a coincidence, it was an observation worth investigating…

During the first years of his voyage aboard the “HMS Beagle” Darwin collected a considerable number of fossils of mammals from different localities in Argentina and Uruguay. He found the first fossils at Punta Alta September 23, 1832 and the last in 1834 at Puerto San Julián. The fossils were then sent to England to his former mentor, the botanist John Stevens Henslow, and deposited in the Royal College of Surgeons at London: Here in 1837 to 1845 the bones were studied and classified by the famous Victorian palaeontologist Richard Owen.
On the basis of this fossil material Owen will describe various new species of the Pliocene and Pleistocene of South America, including Equus curvidens (a horse species), Glossotherium sp., Mylodon darwini and Scelidotherium leptocephalum (all species of giant sloths), Macrauchenia patachonica (an endemic ungulate), and the strange Toxodon platensis (a rhinoceros-like animal). Unfortunately in April 1941 the paleontological collection of the Royal College was severely damaged by an air attack, nearly 95% of the collection was lost. After the war the surviving material was transferred to the Natural History Museum in London.

Fossils were known in South America since before the Spanish conquistadors, but had been interpreted as the remains of mythical creatures or giants, destroyed presumably by the gods in a remote time. Still in 1774 the English Jesuit Thomas Falkner notes:

“On the banks of the river Carcarania … there are a large number of bones of extraordinary size, which seem human.“

Only 32 years later the French naturalist George Cuvier will publish the first scientific publication on a fossil mammal of South America, the giant sloth Megatherium americanum, followed in 1806 by the description of the elephant-like genus Mastodon.

In 1838 Owen writes in the opening paragraph of his work on the fossil mammals collected by Darwin (The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle; 1838-1843):

“It may be expected that the description of the osseous remains of extinct Mammalia, which rank amongst the most interesting results of Mr. Darwin’s researches in South America, should be preceded by some account of the fossil mammiferous animals which have been previously discovered in that Continent. The results of such a retrospect are, however, necessarily comprised in a very brief statement; for the South American relics of extinct Mammalia, hitherto described, are limited, so far as I know, to three species of Mastodon, and the gigantic Megatherium.“

The young and inexperienced Darwin identified many of the recovered bones wrong. He attributed discovered bony plates (so called osteoderms) to the Megatherium, following the reconstruction by Cuvier of the animal as an armoured sloth; Owen later attributed the fossils to the armour of the giant “armadillo” species Glyptodon.
The molars of Toxodon were interpreted by Darwin as the remains of a giant rodent, but even Owen later admitted that these teeth display a certain similarity to those of rodents (in fact there is a bit of truth in Darwin errors, Toxodon is now considered a peculiar form of South American ungulates, a group distant related to rodents).
But also Owen made mistakes, he misinterpreted the relationships of these fossil mammals to modern animals, attributing them or implying to them a close connection with certain animal groups still existing today. Observing fossils similar to bones of the modern tucutucu or tuco-tuco, a small rodent of the genus Ctenomys, Darwin realized that species were replaced in time by similar species.
Darwin summarizes that “The most important result of these findings is the confirmation of the law that existing animals have a close relationship with extinct species” (1839), an additional clue for Darwin that species are not isolated entities in time and evolution of species is not only possible, but really happened.

Bibliography:

ELDREDGE, N. (2009): A Question of Individuality: Charles Darwin, George Gaylord Simpson and Transitional Fossils. Evo. Edu. Outreach 2(1): 150-155
ELDREDGE, N. (2008): Experimenting with Transmutation: Darwin, the Beagle, and Evolution. Evo. Edu. Outreach 2(1): 35-54
FERNICOLA; VIZCAINO & DE IULIIS (2009): The fossil mammals collected by Charles Darwin in South America during his travels on board the HMS Beagle. Revista de la Asociacon Geologica Argentina. 64(1): 147-159
QUATTROCCHIO, M.E.; DESCHAMPS, C.M.; ZAVALA, C.A.; GRILL, S.C. & BORROMEI, A.M. (2009): Geology of the area of Bahia Blanca, Darwin’s view and the present knowledge: a story of 10 million years. Revista de la Asociacion Geologica Argentina 64(1): 137-146

The published description of the resuscitated “32.000 year old Ice Age plant“, in fact a phenotyp variation of the extant Silene stenophylla, is an ulterior intriguing glimpse in the ancient ecosystem of the Ice Age steppe, an environment characterized by unusual climatic conditions and a particular plant community with species that today grow in very different environments.

Fig.1. The period of the Diluvium, or Ice Age, with a glacier invading the land, from UNGER, F. (1851): Ideal Views of the Primitive World, in its Geological and Palaeontological Phases. Taylor and Francis, London (image in public domain, from the U.S.G.S. library).

There are various methods to reconstruct the plant community of a past landscape. Flowering plants produce pollen grains composed by a chemically very stable substance named Sporopollenin, therefore pollen grains usually are well preserved in sediments (but as correctly noted in the comments not in soils). Identifying and counting the pollen deposited over time on the bottom of a lake or conserved in the layers of a bog we can infer the vegetation that once surrounded these sediment traps. In such sediments also plant detritus can be conserved.
Many animals transport and store plant detritus in their burrows. The conserved seeds of S. stenophylla were found in an ancient ground squirrel cache. Apart trying to grow the seeds, the fragments of leafs, blossoms, buds and seeds can often be identified to species-level and help to reconstruct the vegetation inside the range of activity of the former burrow-occupier.
Plant remains or pollen can also be found in the gut content of mummified animals or in fossilized dung, also referred as coprolithes (or dung-stones).
Based on such fossils a particular ice age plant community was reconstructed that is often referred as steppe, arctic-steppe, steppe-tundra, herb-tundra or mammoth steppe. Today the term steppe is applied to grassland or shrubland with a relative dry and temperate climate, meanwhile tundra applies to an environment where the growth of trees and shrubs is inhibited by the low temperatures and species of herbaceous plants or grass dominate. The words steppe-tundra or mammoth steppe seems therefore at first an odd combination of contradicting terms.

Studying the preserved content in the intestine of the mummified mammoth calf “Lyuba“, we can try to imagine the plant community that dominated the continents of Europe-Siberia and North America some 40.000 years ago.
The preserved material is dominated by species of two grass-families (Poaceae and Cyperaceae), indicating an open environment. Other plant groups identified are Artemisia, a group found today especially under dry or semi-dry conditions, the rushrose Helianthemum, also found under dry conditions, and the Jacob’s ladder Polemonium, native today to cool temperate and arctic regions. Unlike as in the modern treeless tundra there existed apparently spots of forest, indicated by the presence of pollen grains of Pine (Pinus), Spruce (Picea), Birch (Betula), Willow (Salix) and Alder (Alnus), all trees that can tolerate snow or low temperatures and grow in part under dry conditions (pine and spruce) and in part under humid conditions (birch, willow, alder). It is unlikely that all these plants grow directly on one spot, considering also that a mammoth herd moved from grazing spot to grazing spot and pollen grains could be transported by wind, however all these plants nevertheless existed in a relative restricted space. The term mammoth steppe is therefore not too inappropriate, as species of warm and dry habitats did coexist with species of cold and humid habitats, resulting in a plant community with a uniquely rich biodiversity.

To understand such a community it is important to note the climatic differences of the modern tundra and the ice age steppes. The overall cold temperatures in an ice age world reduced significantly the evaporation of water from the oceans, resulting in a drier atmosphere and lack of precipitation (snow or rain) on large areas of the continents. This caused dry conditions in the summer and also reduced snow cover during winter time; and snows inhibits photosynthesis and therefore limits plant growth.
The modern tundra is today found at a northern latitude of more than 65°, characterized by short summers with the sun reaching only a low altitude above the horizon in this season. During the ice age the mammoth steppe spread until 45° N. Here the sun climbs much higher above the horizon and the insolation is more intense, photosynthetic activity is more productive and plants can grow well despite cold temperatures.

The particular plant community of the mammoth steppe was an adaption to the particular combination of environmental factors during the ice age. Little is known about adaptions of the single plants to this environment. The described specimens of the ice age S. stenophylla produced more buds and the roots developed slower than modern specimens of the same species. In an environment with a short period of growth and limited availability of insects as pollinators investing in more flowers could be an advantage – the discovery of living tissue is therefore a unique opportunity to study possible physiological adaptations to the lost world of the mammoth steppe.

Bibliography:

CRAWFORD, R.M.M. (2008): Plants at the Margin – Ecological Limits and Climate Change. Cambridge University Press: 496
GAGLIOTI, B.V.; BARNES, B.M.; ZAZULA, G.D.; BEAUDOIN, A.B. & WOOLLER, J.M. (2011): Late Pleistocene paleoecology of arctic ground squirrel (Urocitellus parryii) caches and nests from Interior Alaska’s mammoth steppe ecosystem, USA. Quaternary Research 76: 373-382
GEEL, v.B.; FISHER, D.C.; ROUNTREY, A.N.; ARKEL, v.J.; DUIVENVOORDEN, J.F.; NIEMAN, A.M.; REENEN, B.A.v.; TIKHONOV, A.N.; BUIGUES, B. & GRAVENDEEL, B. (2011): Palaeo-environmental and dietary analysis of intestinal contents of a mammoth calf (Yamal Peninsula, northwest Siberia). Quaternary Science Reviews 30: 3935-3946
NAGY, L. & GRABHERR, G. (2009): The Biology of Alpine Habitats. Oxford University Press: 389

The use of natural forces as metaphor has a long tradition, especially phenomena as fire, floods or storms were often associated with negative historic events like war, invasions or plagues.
During the 18th century the European revolutions against aristocracy and monarchy, especially the French revolution of 1789-1799, changed this negative to a positive view. Now fast occurring social changes were like the positive aftermaths of a disaster or a crisis – the old is destroyed to make place for the new.
It was still under the impressions left by the great earthquake of Lisbon in 1755 that the metaphors of earthquakes to describe the social revolutions of the time became popular. Like the news of the earthquake the possible social implications of the French revolution were discussed by people from all over the old continent.

“Many parts of Europe are in obvious disorder. In many others there is a dull rumble coming from [the] underground, a faint movement that threatens the political world like a general earthquake.”
Edmund Blurke (Irish philosopher, 1729-1797)

The picture of the volcano as positive symbol of insurrection against social injustice needed more time to become popular. Despite travel accounts and pamphlets, an erupting volcano was a rare event in Central Europe and mostly unknown to the larger public. In contrasts the tumults in Naples of 1647, with the well-known active volcano Vesuvius nearby, were promptly compared to a volcanic eruption by local historians.

Only during the French revolution the term “éruption” and the metaphor of the volcano is widely adopted by the revolutionaries. Like a volcano spreads unstoppable fires over the landscape also the revolution will spread a purifying fire over the nations, burning to ashes the old establishment and governments.

“In the Royal Palace the most violent invocations followed with tremendous speed, the most violent orators jumped on the tables, inflamed the minds of their audience, which gathered around them, to spread then into the city like the burning lava of a volcano.”
“Histoire de la Revolution de 1789 et de l´Establissement d´une Constitution en France.” (1790)

Fig.1. “Third eruption of the volcano of 1789, to take place before the end of the world, which will shake all thrones, and overturn a horde of monarchies” by Auguste Desperret (1804-65), lithography published in the magazine “La Caricature” of June 1833. Only after 1795 depictions of eruptions became commonly associated with social revolutions (see also “the Volcanism blog” for a further analysis of the image; image in public domain).

Bibliography:

THÜSEN, J.v.d. (2008) : Schönheit und Schrecken der Vulkane – Zur Kulturgeschichte des Vulkanismus. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt: 239

“It was soon after I began collecting stones, i.e., when 9 or 10, that I distinctly recollect the desire I had of being able to know something about every pebble in front of the hall door–it was my earliest and only geological aspiration at that time.“

Darwin today is mostly associated with terms like natural selection and evolution, but his first scientific achievements and publications were dealing – even against his own preconceptions – with geology.

As a medicine student at Edinburgh University (1825-1827) Darwin frequented various courses on natural science. Here he encountered geology in the form of the lectures by mineralogist Professor Robert Jameson. Darwin considered the teaching of Jameson as boring and despite his ambitions in collecting minerals in early years, during his remaining time at university he never again actively joined a lecture about geology.
The later time at Cambridge was more productive; he joined various privately organized geological-botanical excursions in the areas surrounding the town. In July 1831 he visited the cave of Llanymynech near his hometown of Shrewsbury and in August of the same year, after graduating from Cambridge University and pushed by his mentor and friend, botanist John S. Henslow, he accompanied Professor Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873, considered one of the founding fathers of geology in England, the Darwin Correpondence Project discusses this trip and  “Darwin´s introduction to geology“) on a one week long geologic tour in North Wales. Twenty pages of notes made by Darwin during the tour are today conserved in the library of the Cambridge University. In his private autobiography he later remembered: “This tour was of decided use in teaching me a little how to make out the geology of a country…“

When Darwin returned to Shrewsbury, a letter from Captain Robert FitzRoy‘s offered him a position as gentlemen companion on board of the ship “Beagle“. FitzRoy was himself a gifted amateur geologist and was searching a talented naturalist with additional geological knowledge to sustain him in a personal task – the Beagle voyage, despite improving the nautical maps of South America, could also be used to gather geological evidence for the biblical flood, a worldwide phenomena considered real by most geologists at the time. As a welcoming gift FitzRoy presented Darwin with a copy of Charles Lyell’s recently published “Principles of Geology” (first edition 1830-1832).
Darwin will became strongly influenced by the “slow occurring” geology as proposed by Lyell. He observed at his first stop of the Beagle on the Cape Verde Islands (January 16, 1832 to February 8,) sediments enclosed by lava flows and raised above the sea level, but with fossils similar to the shells in the sea nearby (implying no substantial change of the environment over time). He applied the principles formulated by Lyell and became convinced that the surface of earth changes over time only slowly and gradually, not as believed by many naturalists at the time by sudden catastrophic events, like the “biblical flood”.

In a letter to his sisters Darwin confessed that he “literally could not sleep for thinking over my [geology]“.

Fig.1. Profile of the island of St. Jago (today Santiago) as seen by Darwin in 1832. Darwin was the first to study the geology of the Cape Verde Islands (from DARWIN 1876). Darwin recognized three distinct layers of rocks, a lower series with volcanic rocks composed of volcanic breccias and magma dikes (deposited under water), a limestone with fossils and finally a cover of basaltic lava. Darwin, trained by Sedgwick, noted the contact metamorphism between the former hot molten lava and the earlier cool limestone.
It is curious to note that Darwin adopted the geological terms used by German geologists to describe the rocks observed in the field, here the strong influence of Alexander von Humboldt works, read by the young Charles, is recognizable (image in public domain).

February 20, 1835 Darwin experienced a strong earthquake that destroyed the town of Valdivia in Chile:

“I happened to be on shore, and was lying down in the wood to rest myself. It came on suddenly, and lasted two minutes, but the time appeared much longer. The rocking of the ground was very sensible.”

Darwin noted after the earthquake the raised shell beds along the coast of the Pacific and the similarities of these deposits with the layers of fossils observed on the cliffs of the islands of Cape Verde. Could it be possible that the sum of these small vertical movements could form such high mountains like the Andes? Earth had then to be very old, so that countless earthquakes would have enough time to modify the surface of the entire planet.

During the voyage (1831-1836) Darwin encountered various outcrops with magmatic and volcanic products and he became soon fascinated by these rocks. On the Galapagos Islands he carefully studied the viscosity of lava flows:

“The degree of fluidity in different lavas does not seem to correspond with any apparent corresponding amount of difference in their composition“

This is an erroneous conclusion as the viscosity of lava in fact depends of the amount of dissolved silica. However he correctly postulates that a mineralogical differentiation of magma is possible by segregation of minerals by gravity – a fundamental point to explain the different lava types found on earth:

“Much of the difficulty which geologists have experienced, when they have compared the composition of volcanic with plutonic formations, will, I think, be removed, if we may believe, that most plutonic masses have been, to a certain extent, drained of those comparatively weighty and easily liquefied elements, which compose the trappean and basaltic series of rocks.“

At the time the mechanics and origin of volcanoes  was fiercely discussed. The eminent German geologist Leopold von Buch imagined that volcanoes form very fast like a bubble on the crust of the earth: first geologic forces push up the ground and form the mountain, then the summit collapses and the molten magma is released, causing a catastrophic eruption. Darwin did not share this vision of uprising volcanoes; in part the model proposed very fast rates of elevation and Darwin was convinced from his observations of lava flows interbedded with sediments that volcanoes form by episodic smaller eruptions. Again the geologic observations demonstrated two important facts: slow and small modifications can over vast periods of time completely reshaped the surface of earth.

In the five years that the voyage of the Beagle lasted, Darwin wrote 1.383 pages of notes about geology – compared to a mere 368 pages of notes on plants and animals.

After returning to England (1836) Darwin presented his first scientific discourse of the geology of the Andes at the Royal Geological Society and published some preliminary results about volcanic phenomena observed in South America. His major contributions to volcanology are two later books: “The structure and distribution of coral reefs“, published in 1842, and the “Geological Observations on the Volcanic Islands” published in 1844. The first book covers the distribution, structure and formation of coral-riffs around the slowly drowning volcanic islands in the Pacific, the second presents the descriptions of the visited volcanic islands, like Ascension, St. Helena, the Galapagos and a short notification about the geology of South Africa and Australia.

Fig.2. Atoll formation according to Darwin, 1842. Darwin proposed that volcanic islands with fringing reefs, islands with barrier reefs and atolls (i.e. ring-shaped reefs without a volcanic island) are different stages of one process, governed by subsidence and reef growth. This famous concept is based on surface examination of reefs and comparison of islands and atolls in different stages of development (image in public domain).

In 1846 he published his “Observations on South America“, a book that covers the continent Darwin explored and studied most.

Darwin also published some minor papers dealing with other subjects of geology encountered during the voyage (not to mention the volumes of the “The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle” dedicated to the collected fossil remains). In 1846 a description about the geology of the Falkland Islands, in 1838 about some phenomena connected with the volcanism in South America, in 1841 about the distribution of erratic blocks and sediments found in South America and in 1845 the observations about the dust that can be found, transported by the wind, on ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

In July 1838 he visited Glen Roy in Scotland and published his opinion on the origin of parallel terraces found along the slopes of the mountains there. Based on his observation in South America he proposed a marine origin of the terraces as ancient shores of a today vanished sea. Isolated large boulders, also found on the floors of the valleys, were according to his hypothesis the remains of debris transported by icebergs. Darwin encountered his first glaciers in January 1833 during the survey of the Beagle of Tierra del Fuego. He describes them of a beautiful “beryl blue” and noted that the ice falling from the snouts into the sea formed icebergs and that these icebergs often incorporated and transported rocks and debris. When the ice melts the debris is released and deposited on the bottom of the flooded valleys. For Darwin the channels of Tierra del Fuego were the modern equivalent of Scotland´s valleys long time ago.

Fig.3. “A glacier with moraines” from A.R. Wallace´s “Island Life” (1880), image in public domain.

Two years after the publication of the “Observations on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, and of Others Parts of Lochaber in Scotland, with an Attempt to Prove that They are of Marine Origin” a new theory dealing with the idea of ice ages attributed the terraces to the shores of former glacial lakes dammed up by ancient glaciers, like the examples observed in the European Alps at the time.

After these publications Darwin quickly gave up his “geological phase” and retired from active geological research. In 1842 he visited Cwm Idwal in North Wales, one of the last geological excursion before his ill health forced him to an apparent quiet country life.

Geology played a major role in Darwin’s life and scientific work: The formation of volcanoes, the slow subsidence of coral reefs, the rising of the Andes by earthquakes, the fossil relatives to modern species in South America, these geological observations enabled Darwin to grasp two fundaments needed for his scientific theory: the deep time and the slow, but perpetual changes of earth itself.
If geology was able to such profound modifications over time, so had biology, to adapt and survive to an ever changing environment.

Bibliography:

CHIESURA, G. (2010): A Santiago sulle orme di Darwin. Darwin – Bimestrale di Scienze No.40: 32-36
HERBERT, S. (2005): Charles Darwin, Geologist. Cornell University Press: 485
ROBERTS, M. (2001): Just before the Beagle: Charles Darwin’s geological fieldwork in Wales, summer 1831. Endeavour Vol. 25(1): 33-37
SEWARD, A.C. (2006): Darwin And Modern Science. The Echo Library, Teddington: 489
TOSATTI, G. (2008): Charles Darwin geologo. Atti Soc. Nat. Mat. Modena 139: 205-219
ZAPPETTINI, O. & MENDIA, J. (2009): The first Geological Map of Patagonia. Revista de la Asociación Geológica Argentina 64 (1): 55 – 59

Online Resources:

Darwin in London Project (2009): Charles Darwin: A Genius in the Heart of London. (Accessed 12.02.2011)
The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online (2010): Geology of The Voyage of The Beagle. (Accessed 12.02.2011)

In the year 1725 the professor of medicine and personal physician of the bishop of the German town of Würzburg, Dr. Johann Bartholomäus Adam Beringer (1667-1738), was approached by three chaps, who offered him the possibility to purchase some strange stones they had found in the fields.
Beringer recognized the unique value of the discovery and paid a rich reward for these and further specimens. After a short time he possessed the greatest collection of stones displaying on the surface various bugs, molluscs, plants, birds, mammals, stars, suns and even Hebraic letters.
One year later, in 1726, Beringer published a monographic work with 14 sections and 21 plates depicting 204 specimens of his collection: the “Lithographia Wirceburgensis”, assuring the veracity of the stones as a divine miracle.
But then the scandal was revealed – the chaps admitted that the stones were artificially carved, incited by two peers of Beringer, the mathematician Jean Ignace Roderique (1697-1756) and the theologian Johann Georg von Eckhardt (1664-1730). The two scholars admitted that the fraud was their revenge for the presumptuous behaviour of Beringer and intended to expose his credulity and incompetence. The public and the media were not amused by the childish behaviour of all the involved persons: The reputation of all the three scholars was ruined, Roderique and Eckhardt were forced to leave the city and Beringer tried to minimize the damage by destroying almost all of the printed copies and the printing plates of his book. He never recovered from the humiliation and died embittered years later.
Almost every student of earth sciences knows this or a similar version of the myth, often told in textbooks as warning of blind faith and argument from authority. The beautiful carved stones of limestone are today remembered as “Würzburger Lügensteine” – the infamous “lying stones of Würzburg“.
However careful study of the still existing stones and the preserved historic documents of the lawsuit that investigated the claims of fraud at Beringer´s time depict a much more complicated “criminal case.”

Fig.1. and 2. The lying stones as depicted in the Lithographia Wirceburgensis (images in public domain).

Today 434 lying stones survive, 494 are depicted in the Lithographia Wirceburgensis and Beringer himself claims that he possessed more than 2.000. However considering the short period in which the “discoveries” took place (less than one year) it seems more reasonable to assume that this number is deliberately exaggerated. Estimated 600 to 1.100 true lying stones seem a more plausible number.

Beringer affirms that he received or discovered the first stones in May of the year 1725. Between June and November he hired the two brothers Hehn, the chap Zänger and later a fourth person, which name is not recorded, to collect further stones on the presumed site of the first discovery.
Beringer began almost immediately to describe the various stones and ordered the printing plates for his book; he also published a preview of his work in October of 1725. Already then first doubts were cast on the veracity of the stones, but Beringer presented various witnesses that could testify that indeed the stones were found during the excavations on a hill near Würzburg. Johann Georg von Eckhardt, and later Jean Ignace Roderique, were send to investigate the site but couldn’t find any stone there. However they also couldn’t provide evidence to dismiss Beringer´s claims.

It is important to note that Beringer never affirmed that the stones were true petrifactions ( the petrified remains of organisms killed by the biblical flood) and he even states that the stones differ from the true petrifactions found in the hills near Würzburg. He discusses in great detail the various explanations proposed for the origin of petrifactions in the first chapters of “his” Lithographia (as a matter of fact the book is published as doctoral thesis under the name of one of Beringer´s students – Georg Ludwig Hueber – but his contribution is limited to an introduction of 9 pages) and examines the various hypotheses, but dismiss all in favour of a literally “miracle”. God himself created these stones and the recognizable carving spurs (!) on the stones are only a trace of the power of god creating these figures.

In spring of 1726 Beringer received some rocks from the fourth chap, this time in fact fabricated by Roderique to reveal the artificial nature of the stones. The fraud is revealed, even in the presence of the bishop (the Lithographia is dedicated to him), but Beringer simply modifies some chapters of the Lithographia, still in press, claiming that it is now only proven that the last stones are fakes and the first generation is still evidence for (literally) god’s hand carving the rocks. Beringer is apparently so self-confident in his position that he initiates a process against the claims of fraud regarding his persona. In the process, that will last until after the publication of the Lithographia, the incriminated chaps will only admit to have sold the stones to Beringer, but not to have carved the figures. Considering the depictions of exotic animals and even Hebraic letters on the lying stones it is in fact difficult to image that people from a rural area with no naturalistic background would be able to execute such an elaborate hoax.
There is no doubt that the scholar Roderique manufactured some of the stones, however he arrived to Würzburg only in the winter 1725-1726, so he can not be responsible for the first generations of stones described by Beringer already in October of 1725. Roderique left Würzburg voluntarily in 1730, the revealed “scandal” had no influence on his career and he died as respected scholar and publisher years later. There is no evidence that Eckhart played a major role in the entire story, apart the first investigation of the supposed excavation site. Both Roderique and Eckhart had no motive for revenge versus Beringer and were relatively unsuccessful in the attempt to discredit the lying stones, as they – or others, could never demonstrate that that the first stones were fakes.

But who then faked the first lying stones?

Beringer didn’t suffer too much from the supposed scandal, not only didn’t he even try to prevent the publication of the Lithographia after the first claims of fraud (there was still plenty time left), but he retained his position and reputation. In 1767 even a second edition of the Lithographia was published with the original plates (not even touched by Beringer) of the first edition.
His hypothesis of divine intervention on the rocks was never ridiculed in a time when fossils were anyway considered the vestiges of a biblical flood. However it is true that after the newspapers revealed that it was possible to fake the stones (like done by Roderique) the lying stones could no longer be used to support uncritically this hypothesis.

Only after Beringer´s death his strange behaviour, he remained unimpressed by all the claims of fraud, was interpreted by many authors as simple ignorance or even criminal stubbornness. But maybe he remained calm because he was sure that nobody could definitely prove that the first generations of stones were fakes, simply because he knew who carved the figures in the stones. Beringer had the naturalistic knowledge and probably also the contacts to professional craftsmen to perpetuate such an elaborate hoax – even if we never will know the entire truth, one fact is clear, the modern myth of the lying stones is itself a lie…

Bibliography:

BEHRINGER, J.B.A. & HUEBER, G.L. (1726): Litographiae Wirceburgensis, ducentis lapidum figuratorum, a potiori insectiformium, prodigiosis imaginibus exornatae specimen. Würzburg 1726. Scan by www.BioLib.de
NIEBUHR, B. & GEYER, G. (2005): Beringers Lügensteine: 493 Corpora Delicti zwischen Dichtung und Wahrheit. Beringeria Sonderheft 5, Teil II: 188

Fig.1. “Roy Andrews Chapman on “Kublai Khan”, from ANDREWS 1921 (image in public domain).

Roy Chapman Andrews (born January 26, 1884 -1960) was an American explorer, adventurer, naturalist, mammologist and later director of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
As young man he worked as taxidermist, a self-taught art, to pay for university. After graduation he attempted to get a job at the Natural History Museum in New York, but at the time there were no positions vacant. Chapman however responded that he was even willing to clean the floors, if this could him bring into the museum.
Surprised by such ardour he was hired as janitor and assistant taxidermist. Maybe mocking him in friendly way he was assigned every morning to mop the floors in the taxidermy studio; the afternoons were then devoted to real taxidermy.

However by hard work and an incredible enthusiasm he managed to attract attention on his persona and he was in the end granted a full time job as taxidermist. In 1907 he was send on his first expedition. February 7, a whale was washed ashore on Long Island and the museum hoped to recover the skeleton for display. Chapman and a colleague got to the site, where they discovered that a storm was slowly, but incessantly, covering the large carcass with sand. For two days they battled against the storm, but only a week later and with the help of local fishermen the skeleton was finally brought into the museum.

Andrew then visited Japan and China, where he collected animals and experienced the particularities of the Far East. In 1920 he persuaded palaeontologist and museum director Fairfield Osborn to organize an expedition into Asia, to search for fossils of the early ancestors of mammals, including humans.

Fig.2. “Relief map of Mongolia showing routes, Central Asiatic Expeditions, 1922-1930.”, from ANDREWS 1932 (image in public domain).

Between 1922 and 1939 Andrews and his team carried out five expeditions into previously poorly mapped or unknown areas of Central Asia , a vast desert plagued by blizzards, sandstorms, snakes, floods, bandits, civil war and an insecure political situation.
The mission of the expedition, carried out with an odd combination of automobiles and camels, was to recover geographical, archaeological, botanical, zoological and geological data, but especially to discover the fossils of early hominids.

Fig.3. “Camel and motor car tires” from ANDREWS 1932 (image in public domain).

One of the most important discoveries of the expedition was achieved by chance – Chapman got lost in the monotonous plains and asked direction to a military outpost, meanwhile the photographer of the team, John B. Shackelford, stumbled upon a cliff edge where he noted some fossil bones. They had discovered a site full of bones of dinosaurs and mammals – even a large egg, believed to be from a bird. Only some hours after the discovery the expedition was forced to turn back – winter was approaching fast in the Gobi – but they decided to return the next years.

Fig.4. “The Flaming Cliffs of Djadokhta” (Southern Mongolia), type locality of the Upper Cretaceous Djadoktha Formation, from BERKEY & MORRIS 1927 (image in public domain).

In the cliffs of red glowing sandstone, named appropriately by Chapman “Flaming Cliffs“, they discovered what would become part of the history of palaeontology: various previously unknown dinosaur species – like the Protoceratops or the Velociraptor - and rare bones and skulls of Cretaceous mammals, like Zalambdalestes, Djadochtatherium and Deltatheridium. Embedded in the sediments they found also clusters of large fossil eggs -eggs of dinosaurs! Such fossils were extremely rare, before Chapman only one site on the French Riviera was known with such fossils.

Fig.5. “The first nest of dinosaur eggs, discovered by Georg Olsen at Shabarakh Usu in 1923. Two eggs and part of another are shown lying on the surface. The small sandstone ledge in the background was removed intact and sent to the Museum. In the center of the block of stone thirteen other eggs were discovered, 1923″, from ANDREWS 1932 (image in public domain).

Roy Chapman Andrews was a gifted storyteller; he published various accounts of his expeditions and loved to set up his image in the general public as an adventurer. In his 1935 book, appropriately titled “This Business of Exploring“, he wrote:

“I was born to be an explorer…There was never any decision to make. I couldn’t do anything else and be happy.”

There are various elements in the Indiana Jones movies resembling the life of Roy Chapman Andrews. Indiana Jones is introduced in the first movie “The Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) venturing to Nepal, like Andrews ventured in the Far East. Jones most recognized attributes comprises a 38 colt and a fedora hat and various photos of Andrew show him with a broad rimmed hat. During expeditions Andrews loved to hunt animals, for collection or cooking, but he also used his pistols to defend the expedition from bandits.
However both producer G. Lucas and director S. Spielberg based the movie and the fictional character mainly on their impressions of matinée serials and pulp magazines of the 1930´s and 1940´s, there is no official statement that Indiana is based on a single or even a true historic character. But Andrews (and many other naturalists and explorers of the 19th and 20th century) without doubt influenced with his discoveries, stories and especially books the general view and love of the public for adventurers. So in a certain manner Andrews still is a part of the Indiana Jones universe.

Bibliography:

ANDREWS, R.C. (1921): Across Mongolian Plains – A naturalists account of China’s “Great Northwest”. D. Appleton & Company: 276
ANDREWS, R.C. ed. (1932): The New Conquest of Central Asia – A narrative of the explorations of the Central Asiatic Expeditions in Mongolia and China, 1921-1930. Natural History of Central Asia Vol.I.; The American Museum of Natural History New York: 678
ANDREWS, R.C: (1935): This Business Of Exploring. G.P. Putnam´s Sons, New York: 288
BERKEY, C.P. & MORRIS, F.K. (1927): Geology of Mongolia – A reconnaissance report based on the investigations of the years 1922-1923. Natural History of Central Asia Vol.II; The American Museum of Natural History New York: 474
GALLENKAMP, C. (2001): Dragon Hunter – Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions. Penguin Group, New York: 344
NOVACEK, M. (2002): Time Traveler: In Search of Dinosaurs and Ancient Mammals from Montana to Mongolia. Farrar Strauss and Giroux: 352

Fig.1. Photography of the underwater “Baker” nuclear explosion of July 25, 1946 showing the white sphere of water and vapour formed by the second shock wave of the explosion (image in public domain).

The U.S. performed also the first fully underground explosion – code name “Ranier” – that was detected by about 50 seismic stations; however, it was confused in part with a “normal” earthquake.
With the ban of nuclear weapon (well, sort of…) testing in the year 1958 it became necessary to install an effective worldwide monitoring system. Three years later the set-up of the WorldWide Standardized Seismographic Network (WWSSN) began and in 1966 almost 112 stations were working in the monitoring project “Vela“. Vela provided a large quantity of supplementary seismic data used to answer three questions: Where is the seismic event located? What is the source type (artificial or natural) of the event? How large is the event?

“It appears increasingly doubtful that an atomic-weapons test of significant dimension can be concealed either underground or in outer space. A five-kiloton nuclear explosion in an underground salt cavern near Carlsbad, N.M., in December was clearly recorded by seismographs as far away as Tokyo, New York, Uppsala in Sweden and Sodankyla in Finland. The seismograph records included tracings of the ‘first motion,’ considered critical in distinguishing between earthquakes and underground explosions.”
“Scientific American“, February 1962

The signature of a natural earthquake shows a distinct pattern: a seismometer will first detect the Primary and Secondary Waves, followed by the more destructive Surface or Rayleigh Waves.
Seismic P Waves are compressional waves, similar to sound waves in the air. Secondary or Shear (S) Waves are transverse waves, like those that propagate along a rope. A sudden explosion generates a “sphere” of compressional waves travelling in all directions. In contrast an earthquake is caused by the sliding of rocks along a fracture and it will generate shear waves concentrated in a certain direction. Therefore an explosion will show a strong and sudden signal of P-waves, with a similar signal recorded by all the seismometers collocated around the explosion. An earthquake will show a more complex pattern, depending of the position of the seismometer, characterized by strong S-Waves and R-Waves.
Also an underground explosion does not generate very strong surface waves as a natural earthquake does.

Fig.2. Schematic seismogram with Primary (P; compressional waves), Secondary (S; shear waves), and Rayleigh (R; surface waves) phases for an artificial blast and a natural earthquake.

As every atomic explosion will generate a unique pattern, distinct from natural earthquakes, seismology is a reliable tool to control the ban of nuclear test and to supervise countries that still test atomic weapons.

The information recovered from seismograms of nuclear blasts can be applied in forensic seismology also to study detonations of common explosives. Most spectacular cases in the last years comprise the reconstruction of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 (see this abstract by HOLZER at the AGU meeting in 2002) and the investigation in the explosion on the Russian submarine “Kursk” in 2000 (see KOPER et al. 2001; the blog “About.com Geology” hosts many other examples).

Seismic waves can be generated not only by shear movements along faults or by the expansion of plasma (nuclear device) or gas (conventional device) during an explosion, but also by the impact of objects with the ground.
Seismic signals were already used to identify the location of rock-falls and recent research suggests that the signals can help to characterize the dynamics and volume of a landslide, Dave Petley discusses the significance and use of seismograms in various posts published on his “Landslide blog“.

The analysis of seismic waves provided also insights on what happened September 11, 2001 in New York. Seismograph stations around the city recorded the signals generated by the aircraft impacts and the subsequent collapse of the two towers of the World Trade Center (the Lamont-Doherty Cooperative Seismographic Network provides a rich collection of datasets of the seismic activity around N.Y.). The collapse of the south tower generated a signal with a magnitude of 2.1 and the collapse of the north tower, whit a signal of magnitude 2.3, was recorded by 13 stations ranging in distance from 34 to 428km.
Also these seismograms show a distinct pattern if compared to the pattern caused by a natural earthquake. There are no P or S Waves, but the impacts of the buildings on the ground generated a sudden peak of short-period Rayleigh Waves.

Fig.3. Seismic recordings at the seismograph station Palisades (N.Y.) for events at World Trade Center on September 11, distance of station from Ground Zero ~ 34km. Note that impact 1 and collapse 2 relate to the north tower, and impact 2 and collapse 1 apply to the south tower. Expanded views of the first impact and first collapse shown in red. Figure from KIM et al. 2001, published here according to the Usage Permissions granted by AGU & authors.

The seismograms show also that the impact and explosion of the two airplanes generated a relative small amount of seismic energy. This confirms the observation that the collapses of the two towers were not a direct result of the impacts, but caused by the weakening of the supporting structures of the buildings due the subsequent fires.

Most energy of the collapses was dispersed into the deformation of the buildings and the formation of rubble and dust, only a small portion of potential energy was converted into seismic waves. The generated 2.1 and 2.3 earthquakes were too weak to destabilize nearby buildings, most damage was done by the kinetic energy of the debris and the displaced air.

Also the collision of the cruise ship “Costa Concordia” on January 13, 2012 was recorded by the seismograph station “Monte Argentario“, situated on the Italian mainland. From the eyewitness testimony and the Automatic System of the ship the time of collision with a submerged rock was estimated at 20:45 (UTC). This time is confirmed by a sudden peak in the seismogram at 20:45:10 (the seismograph station is distant 18km from the site of the collision, the seismic waves needed almost 3-4 seconds to travel this distance). The seismogram shows also after the impact the “noise” generated by the hull of the ship grinding along the rocky substrate.

Fig.4. Seismogram recorded at the station “Monte Argentario” (Italy) showing the seismic waves generated by the impact of the “Costa Concordia” on January 13, 2012 20:45 (UTC). An accurate analysis of “The seismic wake of “Costa Concordia” (23.01.2012) can even specify the speed of the ship at the moment of the collision.
Figure used with permission and taken from the post “The earthquake of the Costa Concordia” by Italian seismologist Marco Mucciarelli, published on January 21, 2012 on his blog “terremoti, sismologia ed altre sciocchezze“.

Bibliography:

ANDERSON, D.N.; RANDALL, G.E.; WHITAKER, R.W.; ARROWSMITH, S.J.; ARROWSMITH, M.D.; FAGAN, D.K.; TAYLOR, S.R.; SELBY, N.D.; SCHULT, F.R.; KRAFT, G.D. & WALTER, W.R. (2010): Seismic event identification. WIREs Computational Statistics Vol.2, July/August: 414-432
KIM, W.-Y.; SYKES, L.R.; ARMITAGE, J.H.; XIE, J.K.; JACOB, K.H.; RICHARDS, P.G.; WEST, M.; WALDHAUSER, F.; ARMBRUSTER, J.; SEEBER, L.; DU, W.X. & LERNER-LAM, A. (2001): Seismic Waves Generated by Aircraft Impacts and Building Collapses at World Trade Center, New York City. EOS Vol.82 (47)

KOPER, K.D.; WALLACE, T.C.; TAYOLR, S.R. & HARTSE, H.E. (2001): Forensic seismology and the sinking of the Kursk. EOS, Vol.82 (4): 37

The Kobe earthquake lasted for 14 to 20 seconds and reached a magnitude of 7.2 after Richter (7 according to the Japanese intensity scale – shindo, the maximal possible value), the strongest earthquake in western Japan since 1923. The devastating earthquake was not directly connected to the nearby subduction zone of the Philippine Sea Plate, but generated along a local fault system formed by the intersection of the Nojima fault with the Suma fault (see also KOKETSU et al. 1998). The epicentre was located in the Akashi strait only 20 kilometres to the west of Kobe, the hypocenter was situated in a depth of just 10 kilometres. Such a shallow earthquake was not expected to occur in Kobe and the vicinity to the city amplified the disastrous effects of the shakes.

The earthquake damaged seriously the traditional buildings of the residential areas in the western and eastern part of the city; people were surprised asleep in their homes and killed or injured by the collapsing houses. The expressway of Hanshin, opened in 1962, was build according to the earthquake-resistant construction directives of the time; however it collapsed partially during the earthquake as the horizontal shear movements pulverized the concrete of the supporting pillars.
The harbour of Kobe, one of the most important in the world and situated on an artificial island, was severely damaged. The vibrations of the earthquake liquefied the soil and groundwater was pressed out from the pores, fissures opened in the ground and mud inundated parts of the harbour. The basement of many buildings became instable in this water-sand mixture and parts of the harbour slipped into the sea.

Based on the observations of the collapse of the Hanshin expressway and the devastation of the harbour the Japanese government improved the already severe guidelines for anti-seismic buildings.
A sort of anti-seismic construction method was already known in ancient Japan as many old pagodas show characteristics that can minimize the dangerous oscillations of a building caused by an earthquake. In a pagoda the central column, supporting the weight of the entire building, is made of a single log. Like a shaft of bamboo (the largest species can reach a height of 30m) this central column can swing in all directions and adsorbs most of the kinetic energy during an earthquake.
The various floors of the pagoda can move independently and are connected to the inner central column by a complicated construction made of wood, acting like a spring or shock absorber it will also reduce dangerous horizontal movements.

The first modern principles of anti-seismic buildings were introduced at the beginning of the 20th century in Tokyo. The earthquake-proof “Imperial Hotel” was commissioned in 1915 and inaugurated in 1923 as a luxury hotel for foreigners in imperial Japan. It was planned by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), who visited Japan for the first time in 1905.

Fig.1. The “Imperial Hotel” in Tokyo (ca. 1930s-40s), image in public domain.

The site for the hotel seemed unfavourable for such a large building, located in the seismic zone of Tokyo on a 2,4m thick organic soil resting on 20m of soft alluvial sediments.
On such an unstable ground engineers normally choose a deep basement, trying to reach stable rocks or “anchoring” the building in the underground. Surprisingly Wright planned a very shallow basement with just 2-3m depth. He argued that a deep foundation would transfer the oscillations of an earthquake from the ground to the building; however the alluvial mud of the construction site should adsorb the seismic energy and the hotel could float on the sediment like “a battleship floats on water.”
The hotel had several ulterior features designed to minimize the destructive effects of an earthquake:

- The pool in front of the entrance was not only a decorative element, but provided water to fight fire. This element in fact saved the hotel from the firestorm raging after the 1923 earthquake.
- Supplementary reinforced structures on the outside of the building provided extra support for the floors.
- The walls were not constructed simply with bricks, but with a sort of innovative sandwich technology: reinforced concrete between an external and internal layer of bricks.
- The walls of the lower floors were thicker and stronger than the walls on the upper floors, with small openings and few windows.
- A light copper roof would not oscillate as strong as a massive roof, reducing the danger of collapse of the entire building.
- Supplementary “seismic separation joints”, made of ductile lead, were inserted into the walls of the building; during an earthquake the single segments and floors should be able to move independently.
- Pipes were not encased in the concrete, but could swing in cavities hidden in the walls.
- Wright avoided unnecessary decorative elements on the outside of the hotel, which during an earthquake can fall down and kill people.

September 1, 1923 Tokyo was hit by a massive earthquake with a magnitude of 8.3 after Richter, 5.000 buildings collapsed and thousands were heavily damaged.
Wright anxiously awaited information on his hotel and two weeks later he received a telegram from the Japanese businessman Baron Kihachiro Okura:

“Hotel stands undamaged as monument to your genius – Congratulations”

Wright passed this telegram to journalists and helped so to perpetuate a legend that his hotel was completely unaffected by the earthquake, maybe even the only building still standing in Tokyo!
In reality the building was damaged; the central section slumped, several floors bulged and four pieces of stonework fell to the ground – however the building was still standing.
Ironically the building’s only main flaw was the shallow basement. During the earthquake the basement sunk by 0,6m into the liquefied mud and in the subsequent years continued slowly to sink into the ground. The damage and instability of the entire construction finally resulted in the necessity to demolish the entire hotel in 1968.

However many of the anti-seismic features introduced by Wright are still used today and hopefully many new inventions will minimize the deadly effects of future earthquakes.

Bibliography:

KOKETSU, K.; YOSHIDA, S. & HIGASHIHARA, H. (1998): A fault model of the 1995 Kobe earthquake derived from the GPS data on the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge and other datasets. Earth Planets Space, 50: 803-811
WALKER, B. (1982): Earthquake. Planet Earth. Time Life Books: 154