On-fault earthquake energy density partitioning from shocked garnet in an exhumed seismic midcrustal fault.

The energy released during an earthquake is mostly dissipated in the fault zone and subordinately as radiated seismic waves. The on-fault energy budget is partitioned into frictional heat, generation of new grain surface by microfracturing, and crystal-lattice distortion associated with dislocation defects. The relative contribution of these components is debated and difficult to assess, but this energy partitioning strongly influences earthquake mechanics.

Ultra-depleted hydrogen isotopes in hydrated glass record Late Cretaceous glaciation in Antarctica.

The Early Jurassic Butcher Ridge Igneous Complex (BRIC) in the Transantarctic Mountains contains abundant and variably hydrated silicic glass which has the potential to preserve a rich paleoclimate record. Here we present Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopic data that indicates BRIC glasses contain up to ~8 wt.% molecular water (HO), and low (<0.

The earthquake cycle in the dry lower continental crust: insights from two deeply exhumed terranes (Musgrave Ranges, Australia and Lofoten, Norway).

This paper discusses the results of field-based geological investigations of exhumed rocks exposed in the Musgrave Ranges (Central Australia) and in Nusfjord (Lofoten, Norway) that preserve evidence for lower continental crustal earthquakes with focal depths of approximately 25-40 km. These studies have established that deformation of the dry lower continental crust is characterized by a cyclic interplay between viscous creep (mylonitization) and brittle, seismic slip associated with the formation of pseudotachylytes (a solidified melt produced during seismic slip along a fault in silicate rocks). Seismic slip triggers rheological weakening and a transition to viscous creep, which may be already active during the immediate post-seismic deformation along faults initially characterized by frictional melting and wall-rock damage.

Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ~ 2 million years ago.

Rapid environmental change is a catalyst for human evolution, driving dietary innovations, habitat diversification, and dispersal. However, there is a dearth of information to assess hominin adaptions to changing physiography during key evolutionary stages such as the early Pleistocene. Here we report a multiproxy dataset from Ewass Oldupa, in the Western Plio-Pleistocene rift basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai), Tanzania, to address this lacuna and offer an ecological perspective on human adaptability two million years ago.

Short-lived orogenic cycles and the eclogitization of cold crust by spasmodic hot fluids.

Collision tectonics and the associated transformation of continental crust to high-pressure rocks (eclogites) are generally well-understood processes, but important contradictions remain between tectonothermal models and petrological-isotopic data obtained from such rocks. Here we use 40Ar-39Ar data coupled with a thermal model to constrain the time-integrated duration of an orogenic cycle (the burial and exhumation of a particular segment of the crust) to be less than 13 Myr. We also determine the total duration of associated metamorphic events to be approximately 20 kyr, and of individual heat pulses experienced by the rocks to be as short as 10 years.