Ancient Amber-Preserved Salamander Species Discovered by Scientists - http://clapway.com/2015/08/18/ancient-amber-preserved-salamander-species-discovered-by-scientists-233/

Scientists found the first amber-preserved salamander ever in the mountains of the Dominican Republic.

The finding is remarkable, not only because of the amber, but because no species of salamander was previously thought to have ever existed in the Caribbean islands. The exciting discovery by University of California at Berkeley and Oregon State University were published in the journal Palaeodiversity.

“There are very few salamander fossils of any type, and no one has ever found a salamander preserved in amber,” said George Poinar Jr., one of the study’s scientists, in a press release.“And finding it in Dominican amber was especially unexpected, because today no salamanders, even living ones, have ever been found in that region.”

WHAT KILLED THE AMBER-ENTOMBED SPECIES?

Researchers do not yet know what caused the salamander species’ extinction. “They may have been killed by some climatic event, or were vulnerable to some type of predator,” Poinar speculated. As its salamander is missing a leg, researchers believe that the fossil became preserved after escaping from a predator and falling into a deposit of resin that gradually turned into amber.

ORIGINS OF AMBER SALAMANDER

This fight that resulted in the fossil’s composition is believed to have taken place more than 20 million years ago. The lineage of the species itself, however, may date back to between 40 and 60 million years ago, when what is today known as the Greater Antilles region was still attached to South and North America.

RELATED TO SALAMANDERS IN U.S.

The species of the amber-preserved salamander has been named Palaeonplethodon hispaniolae by the researchers. It is a member of the Plethodontidae family, other species of which are common to North America with a concentration in the Appalachians.

If this is true, then it is possible that because the amber-salamander’s species has only been found in the Caribbean, it remained in the area that became the Caribbean during and after it separated from South and North America. But the Palaeonplethodon hispaniolae has some notable features that distinguish it from the species that can be found in North America today, such as indistinct toes.

Ongoing Salamander stories here, here, here.

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Ancient Amber-Preserved Salamander Species Discovered by Scientists

Earthquake Expert Leads Geologists in Battle With Engineers - http://clapway.com/2015/07/15/earthquake-expert-leads-geologists-in-battle-with-engineers654/

OSU’s Chris Goldfinger Leads Worried Geologists

Chris Goldfinger is an Oregon State University earthquake expert who, on Monday, announced to The New Yorker that a giant Northwest earthquake is on the way, and voiced ardent opposition to the University’s plan to build a science center in Newport’s tsunami zone.

SCARE TACTICS NOT A LAST RESORT

Goldfinger recently limned a worst-case scenario for the Oregonian/OregonLive Monday, which depicted hundreds of terrified people evacuating the building after its being shaken to pieces by a magnitude 9 earthquake.

MISE EN SCENE

Goldfinger asks us to imagine survivors, some of them injured, others recently disabled or elderly, all of them trying to drive in the rain, trying to drag themselves through a mile of thick, liquified sandbar littered with active power lines, precisely when a 43-foot tsunami wave rips the Yaquina Bay Bridge apart, carrying large ships and a liquified-natural-gas tank as flying projectiles.

Goldfinger goes on: “Really nobody can calculate if or how many people would die in that building during the next tsunami…[i]t’s not possible to mitigate it to ensure that everybody would survive.”

Unfortunately, potential tsunami woes have thrown the best minds of OSU against each other in a no holds barred battle of intellect and will. So far it’s remained controlled and collegial.

CULTURAL DIVIDE

Goldfinger’s “frenemies” in this debate are Oregon State engineers at large, who believe their designs for an expanded Hatfield Marine Science Center will not only pass peer review, but also produce a world-class demonstration of how buildings in tsunami zones are supposed to be built.

Put this way, it sounds less like a bad idea and more like a contradiction in terms. Goldfinger and his cadres agree that no level, amount, or new method of planning will prevent the inevitable catastrophe any building constructed in a tsunami zone is doomed to become. Goldfinger says the real struggle is in fact a cultural squabble between engineers and earthquake geologists.

debate GOES NATIONAL

Goldfinger modified his position after his featured interview in The New Yorker, adding that in addition to relocating the Science Center elsewhere, the existing OSU and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buildings already in Newport’s South Beach should be moved, too.

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Earthquake Expert Leads Geologists in Battle With Engineers