New specimens of a fossil ostrich from the Miocene of Kenya   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Leona M. Leonard  Gareth J. Dyke  Cyril A. Walker 《Journal of African Earth Sciences》2006,45(4-5):391-394

Fossilised hind limb bones from the late Middle Miocene (approximately 14 million-year-old [MYA]) Fort Ternan, Kadianga West and Ngorora localities in Western Kenya indicate the presence of a new representative of the ostrich genus Struthio. These new fossils represent some of the oldest known records for Struthio yet described, slightly younger than Struthio coppensi, from the Lower Miocene of Namibia. Because the four sub-species of the modern-day ostrich (Struthio camelus camelus, Struthio camelus australis, Struthio camelus massaicus, and Struthio camelus molybdophanes) inhabit the plains of Africa, and as recently as the 1940s, a fifth sub-species was also present in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia (Struthio camelus syriacus), records of Struthio from Kenya and Namibia testify to the much wider distribution of these cursorial birds in the relatively recent past. This is further supported by the very high frequency of ostrich eggshell fragments found across Africa and Eurasia, which vastly outweighs the amount of skeletal material uncovered over the last century.  相似文献   

Calibration of an oscillating nozzle‐type rainfall simulator     

Bofu Yu  Cyril A. A. Ciesiolka  Paul Langford 《地球表面变化过程与地形》2003,28(13):1483-1490

Nozzle‐type rainfall simulators are commonly used in hydrologic and soil erosion research. Simulated rainfall intensity, originating from the nozzle, increases as the distance between the point of measurement and the source is decreased. Hence, rainfall measured using rain gauges would systematically overestimate the rainfall received at the ground level. A simple model was developed to adjust rainfall measured anywhere under the simulator to plot‐wide average rainfall at the ground level. Nozzle height, plot width, gauge diameter and height, and gauge location are required to compute this adjustment factor. Results from 15 runs at different rain intensities and durations, and with different rain gauge layouts, showed that a simple average of measured rain would overestimate the plot‐wide rain by about 20 per cent. Using the adjustment factor to convert measured rainfall for individual gauges before averaging improved the estimate of plot‐wide rainfall considerably. For the 15 runs considered, overall discrepancy between actual and measured rain is reduced to less than 1 per cent with a standard error of 0·97 mm. This model can be easily tested in the ?eld by comparing rainfall depths of different sized gauges. With the adjustment factor they should all give very similar values. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

Lake Neor reveals how mountain vegetation responded to 7000 years of hydroclimate variability in northwestern Iran     

Khadijeh Alinezhad  Elias Ramezani  Morteza Djamali  Arash Sharifi  Alireza Naqinezhad  Cyril Aubert  Emmanuel Gandouin  Ali Pourmand 《第四纪科学杂志》2021,36(4):598-610

Palynological and geochemical analyses provide valuable information about modern and past climatic regimes and vegetation. The impact of climate and humans on past vegetation in the semi-arid areas of northwestern Iran has received increased interest in the wake of warming temperatures in the Middle East. Palynological and down-core XRF elemental abundances from a peat core from Lake Neor enabled a reconstruction of vegetational changes of the past 7000 years over the highlands of northwestern Iran. Periods of increased arboreal pollen (AP) types and high (Artemisia + Poaceae)/Chenopodiaceae ratios along with low titanium abundances, high percentages of total organic carbon, more negative δD values, and higher carbon accumulation rates suggest a relatively wet climate. These conditions have persisted during the periods 6700–6200, 5200–4450 and 3200–2200 cal a bp. The overall low AP values, substantial rise of Chenopodiaceae, high Ti abundances and low values of palaeo-redox proxies, are all evidences of a drier climate, as has been reconstructed for the periods 6200–5200 and 4030–3150 cal a bp and the last 2200 years. An important feature of the last centuries is the increase of anthropogenic and pastoral indicator pollen types. Our results may provide basic data to predict future trends in vegetation dynamics under future climate change in western Asia.  相似文献   

Low melting temperature for calcite at 1000 bars on the join CaCO3‐H2O – some geological implications          下载免费PDF全文

Cyril Durand  Lukas P. Baumgartner  Didier Marquer 《地学学报》2015,27(5):364-369

Melting experiments of calcite were performed on the join CaCO₃‐H₂O at a pressure of 1000 bars. The system evolves to the ternary CaO‐H₂O‐CO₂ system during melting experiments. Our experiments show that partial melting of calcite begins at a low temperature, below 650 °C. Such a low partial melting temperature for carbonates revives the debate about the presence of carbonate melts in the upper crust. More specifically, the conditions for carbonate partial melting are present in carbonate host rocks undergoing contact metamorphism at high temperatures in the presence of water‐rich fluid. The presence of carbonate melts influences physical parameters such as viscosity and permeability in contact aureoles, and, furthermore, decarbonation reactions release massive amounts of CO₂.  相似文献   

Mediterranean Sea response to climate change in an ensemble of twenty first century scenarios     

Fanny Adloff  Samuel Somot  Florence Sevault  Gabriel Jordà  Roland Aznar  Michel Déqué  Marine Herrmann  Marta Marcos  Clotilde Dubois  Elena Padorno  Enrique Alvarez-Fanjul  Damià Gomis 《Climate Dynamics》2015,45(9-10):2775-2802

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The organic chemistry and biology of the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter     

Cyril Ponnamperuma 《Icarus》1976,29(2):321-328

In order to understand the chemical processes which may be taking place in the Jovian atmosphere, we have conducted a number of simulation experiments in the laboratory. These reactions appear to be significant for our understanding of chemical evolution and the nature and origin of organic matter in the universe. Mixtures of methane and ammonia in varying proportions have been exposed to electric discharges and the products analyzed. We have found that, as the methane and ammonia disappear, hydrogen cyanide and acetylene are to be built up. The analysis of the volatiles has also provided us with a wide range of aminonitriles. It is conceivable that some of these nitriles, on hydrolysis, will give rise to amino acids. On cyclization, some of them would provide the pathways for the origin of pyrimidines. A characteristic result of these reactions has also been the appearance of a red polymer which may have a bearing on the color in the red spots of Jupiter. Spectral analysis in the laboratory may provide some clues in our search for organic material in the Jovian atmosphere by orbiting spacecraft, or ground-based observations.  相似文献   

Robotic telescopes for high energy astrophysics in Ondřejov     

Martin Nekola  René Hudec  Martin Jelínek  Matůš Kocka  Petr Kubánek  Filip Münz  Cyril Polášek  Vojtěch Šimon  Jan Štrobl 《Experimental Astronomy》2010,28(1):79-85

We report on two small aperture robotic telescopes called BART and D50 operated in Ondřejov. Both telescopes are capable of automatic observation of gamma ray burst (GRB) optical afterglows. Coordinates of GRBs are taken from alerts distributed via Internet. Telescopes observe other interesting high energy sources when there is not any alert. The smaller telescope BART has aperture D = 254 mm. The bigger telescope D50 has a primary mirror of diameter D = 500 mm. Both telescopes are controlled by free software package RTS2 and are accessible through Internet. We describe the two telescopes and related software and show some results such as our first observed optical counterpart of GRB.  相似文献   

Snow carrots after the Chelyabinsk event and model implications for highly porous solar system objects          下载免费PDF全文

Robert Luther  Natalia Artemieva  Marina Ivanova  Cyril Lorenz  Kai Wünnemann 《Meteoritics & planetary science》2017,52(5):979-999

After the catastrophic disruption of the Chelyabinsk meteoroid, small fragments formed funnels in the snow layer covering the ground. We constrain the pre‐impact characteristics of the fragments by simulating their atmospheric descent with the atmospheric entry model. Fragments resulting from catastrophic breakup may lose about 90% of their initial mass due to ablation and reach the snow vertically with a free‐fall velocity in the range of 30–90 m s^?1. The fall time of the fragments is much longer than their cooling time, and, as a consequence, fragments have the same temperature as the lower atmosphere, i.e., of about ?20 °C. Then, we use the shock physics code iSALE to model the penetration of fragments into fluffy snow, the formation of a funnel and a zone of denser snow lining its walls. We examine the influence of several material parameters of snow and present our best‐fit model by comparing funnel depth and funnel wall characteristics with observations. In addition, we suggest a viscous flow approximation to estimate funnel depth dependence on the meteorite mass. We discuss temperature gradient metamorphism as a possible mechanism which allows to fill the funnels with denser snow and to form the observed “snow carrots.” This natural experiment also helps us to calibrate the iSALE code for simulating impacts into highly porous matter in the solar system including tracks in the aerogel catchers of the Stardust mission and possible impact craters on the 67P/Churyumov‐Gerasimenko comet observed recently by the Rosetta mission.  相似文献   

Rhinocerotid tooth enamel 18O/16O variability between 23 and 12 Ma in southwestern France     

Ilhem Bentaleb  Cyril Langlois  Céline Martin  Paula Iacumin  Matthieu Carré  Pierre-Olivier Antoine  Francis Duranthon  Issam Moussa  Jean-Jacques Jaeger  Nicholas Barrett  Ron Kandorp 《Comptes Rendus Geoscience》2006,338(3):172-179

The relationship between the oxygen isotope ratio of mammal tooth enamel and that of drinking water was used to reconstruct changes in the Miocene oxygen isotope ratio of rainfall (meteoric water ${\delta }^{18}$O_MW). These, in turn, are related to climatic parameters (temperature, precipitation and evaporation rate). ${\delta }^{18}$O values of rhinocerotid teeth from the Aquitaine Basin (southwestern France) suggest a significant climatic change between 17 and 12 Ma, characterized by cooling together with precipitation increase, in agreement with other terrestrial and oceanic records. To cite this article: I. Bentaleb et al., C. R. Geoscience 338 (2006).  相似文献   

The Huygens scientific data archive: Technical overview     

Olivier Witasse  Lyle Huber  Jean-Pierre Lebreton  David Heather  John Zarnecki  Roland Trautner  Piero Leon Stoppato  Chuck See  Cyril Pennanech  Lisa McFarlane  Bobby Kazeminejad  Brijen Hathi  John Haberman  Francesca Ferri  Lyn Doose  Giacomo Colombatti  Michael Bird  Alessio Aboudan 《Planetary and Space Science》2008,56(5):770-777

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