Earthquake News

Nothing significant to report.

Major Earthquakes in the Last Month

All magnitudes expressed use the Richter Scale unless otherwise stated

• November 17th, Magnitude 6.6, Canada (British Columbia)
• November 16th, Magnitude 4.6 + 3.6, USA (California)
• November 15th, Magnitude 4.3, USA (California)
• November 13th, Magnitude 6.5, Chile
• November 8th, Magnitude 6.7, Indonesia (Sumbawa)
• November 5th, Magnitude 5.7, Taiwan
• November 4th, Magnitude 4.9, Iran
• November 3rd, Magnitude 5.9, Greece
• November 2nd, Magnitude 4.0, USA (California)
• October 30th, Magnitude 6.8, Japan
• October 29th, Magnitude 5.4, Mexico
• October 24th, Magnitude 7.0, Indonesia (Banda Sea)
• October 23rd, Magnitude 6.0, Indonesia (West Irian)
• October 22nd, Magnitude 6.2, Afganistan
• October 21st, Magnitude 6.1, Panama

For a list of all recorded earthquakes within the last week, visit the United States Geological Survey website:

Earthquakes above Magnitude 5    All Earthquakes

Volcano News

Increased activity suggest that an eruption of Mount Mayon in the Philippines may be imminent.

Eruptions in the Last Year

• Soufriere Hills, Montserrat (October 2009)
• San Cristobal, Nicaragua (September 2009)
• Mayon, Philippies (July 2009)
• Galeras, Colombia (July 2009)
• Kilauea, Hawaii (July 2009)
• Mount Redoubt, Alaska (May 2009)
• La Cumbre, Galapagos Islands, Ecuador (April 2009)
• Llaima, Chile (April 2009)
• Chaiten, Chile (February 2009)
• Mount Asama, Japan (February 2009)
• Reventador, Ecuador (November 2008)
• Mount Soputan, Sulawesi, Indonesia (October 2008)

Fossil News

• Dinosaur footprints discovered in eastern France. Click here for further information.
• The discovery of a new four foot tall hominid fossil in Ethiopia has pushed back the origins of humans by another million years, to 4.4 million years. The fossil has been named Ardipithecus ramidus.
• A cluster of eight 65 million year old dinosaur eggs have been found in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
• Down House, the home of Charles Darwin in Kent, England, has been nominated for consideration as a World Heritage Site.
• Hundreds of tiny 4-toed mammal footprints have been discovered at the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, USA. The footprints date from the Jurassic of 190 million years ago and are thought to be from a rat-like animal.
• A complete 7' tall juvenile mammoth skeleton has sold at an American auction for $55,000.
• A large deposit of Pleistocene fossils has been found during building work for a new car park next to the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. Fossils found so far include an almost complete Columbian Mammoth, along with remains of american lions, other sabre-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison, horses, ground sloths, turtles, snails and insects.
• German scientists have completed the first draft of the Neanderthal genome having identified 63% of the 3.2 billion base pairs involved.
• Chinese scientists have discovered 7,600 fossils in a 300 metre long area near Zhucheng City, Shandong Province. The finds are all from the late Cretaceous period and include remains of ceratopsian and hadrosaur dinosaurs.
• Arguments are raging over the claimed discovery of a dinosaur trackway along the Arizona/Utah State border in the United States. A number of palaeotologists claim that the 1000 densely packed tracks, occupying an area of 3/4 of an acre, date from 190 million years ago. Others claim that the marks are merely potholes caused by erosion.
• Four tons of illegally exported fossil dinosaur eggs, shell fragments, pine cones and crabs - seized by US Federal Agents in Tuscson, Arizona in May - have been repatriated to Argentina, ther country of origin.
• Polish scientists have ulyarthed a 200 million year old ancestor of T. Rex in a brickyard in the village of Lisowice. The dinosaur is five metres long and will go on display in a new museum built especially for it.
• Palaeontologists have found fish and crocodile remains in a dried up lake bed in sub-saharan Niger. Dating from the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary, this find re-inforces evidence that the Sahara Desert was once green and wet.
• A team of scientists has ulyarthed fossils of at least 11 species of mammals from a sand pit near the town of Chirpan, some 180 km (111 miles) east of Bulgarian capital Sofia, which they believe to have lived about seven million years ago during the Neogene period.
• A hominid jawbone dating from 1.6 million years ago has been found in a cave in Spain. This pushes back the date for Europes earliest known hominid by a half million years.
• Scientists in Brazil have ulyarthed the remains of a 62 million year old crocodile of a type normally associated with Africa. The animal is one of the most complete skeletons of it's kind to be found in South America and has been named Guarinisuchus munizi.
• New research by Australian palaeontologists suggests that the duck-billed platypus may be 40 million years older than thought, dating back to the mid Cretaceous of 120 million years ago. If confirmed, this would make the platypus the world's oldest family of mammals.
• Brazilian & Argentine scientists have found an almost complete skeleton of the largest titanosaur sauropod dinosaur discovered to date. Named Futalognkosaurus dukei the fossil dates from the Cretaceous period - around 88 million years ago - and would have been around 34 meters long, 13 metres high and weigh about 70 tonnes.
• 750kg of 100 million year old dinosaur eggs and fossils smuggled illegally into Australia have been returned to China.
• Following studies of pollen trapped in 20 million year old amber from the Dominican Republic, US scientists claim that orchids - one of the oldest known flowering plants - may date back 80 million years rather than the 26 million years previously thought.
• The concrete dinosaurs in London's Crystal Palace Park have received Grade 1 listing.
• 'Lucy' goes on US tour. A specimen of the proto-hominid Australopithecus afarensis, Lucy was discovered in the Afar province of Ethiopia in 1974. The fossil dates from 3-4 million year ago.
• An amateur palaeontologist has discovered 2 plateosaur skeletons on a building site in Frick, Switzerland. A herbivore, these dinosaurs lived 210 million years ago and measured up to 10 metres long.
• Three chinese men arrested for smuggling following seizure of 158 Cenozoic fossils by customs officials at Hangzhou Airport. The fossils were being posted to an address in Turkey.
• A Siberian mammoth skeleton has sold at a Paris auction for 260,000 euros.
• A complete 33 foot long whale dating from the Pliocene has been discovered in Tuscany, Northern Italy. The fossil will go on display in the Natural History Museum in Florence.
• US customs officials have seized 22 dinosaur eggs from an auction house in Los Angeles following reports that they may have been smuggled illegally out of China.
• A Mexican farmer has discovered a trackway comprising dozens of footprints representing at least three different species of dinosaur along a riverbank in central Mexico.
• At 125 feet long and weighing around 45 tonnes, the largest sauropod dinosaur ever found in Europe has been discovered in Spain. Named Turiasaurus riodenasis the fossil dates from the late Jurassic around 145 million years ago.
• Scientists from the University of Oslo have discovered a fossil "graveyard" of marine reptiles on the arctic island of Spitsbergen. 27 marine reptiles were found dating from the Jurassic and included plesiosaur and icthyosaur remains. The largest fossil so far found during the two week expedition is of a plesiosaur. At 33 feet long (10 metres) this is one of the largest fossils of this type ever discovered. The university intend to mount a further expedition next year to extract the fossil. Early indications is that it is complete. If so, this will be the first full skeleton of a plesiosaur ever found.
• A new titanosaur fossil named Maxakalisaurus topei has been unearthed in the Minas Gerais region of Brazil. The dinosaur - dating from the late Cretaceous, about 80 million years ago - is 13 metres in length and weighs in at 9 tonnes.
• An ancestor of the Blue Whale has been discovered in Australia that possesses teeth instead of baleen. The fossil dates from 25 million years ago.

Mining News

• 87 dead in coalmine gas explosion in Heilongjiang, China.
• The bodies of three miners have been recovered from a flooded gold mine in northwestern Quebec, Canada.
• 3 rescued following a shaft collapse in a Tungsten mine, while three others die in a similar incident in a cassiterite/coltan mine - both mines are in Rwanda.
• New oil field found in Kurdistan, Iraq.
• 3 miners trapped below ground following a shaft collapse have been rescued in Shaanxi, China.
• Worker killed by falling coal in an opencast colliery in South Africa.
• Large bauxite deposit estimated at 550 million tonnes discovered in Adamawa region of Cameroon.
• 26 dead and 5 injured following brake failures on two mine cages in a Tin/Antimony mine in Hunan, China.
• Two miners rescued after being trapped by a power blackout in an Australian zinc mine.
• Large offshore oil discovery in Sierra Leone. The field is estimated to hold some 200 million barrels.
• 13 coalminers dead and 42 injured following a methane gas fire in southern Poland.
• 1 dead and 3 injured following a tremor at a coalmine in the Czech Republic.
• Two incidents in Henan China leave 6 dead in a goldmine electrical fire and 43 dead with 14 injured in a coalmine gas explosion.
• 11 dead and 3 missing after a coalmine gas explosion in Shaanxi Province, China.
• 9 injured and 19 missing following a methane gas explosion in a Slovakian coalmine.
• Cameroon is to begin exporting diamonds in 2010 from deposits discovered in the south east of the country.
• The State Government of Montana, USA, is considering the sale of of mining licences to exploit an estimated 610 million tons of coal underneath some 9,800 acres of countryside.
• Surveys are planned to look for uranium deposits under Mississippi County, Missouri in the United States.
• Barack Obama has reversed a decision by the previous Bush administration to sell oil, gas and mineral leases on federal land near the Arches National Park in Utah.
• Japan plans to undertake an in-depth survey of seabed mineral deposits.
• The Unity Coalmine in Cwmgrach, South Wales, has been re-opened following a 10 year closure. The re-opening has been prompted by the rise in the price of coal on world markets.
• Yulung Copper Mine in Tibet is to commence operations with an estimated reserve of 10 million tons of ore.
• Uranium mining to re-commence in Colorado, USA.
• Oil discovered in Gabon, West Africa.
• New offshore oil find in Brazils Santos Basin near Sao Paulo.
• An Australian company is to buy and re-open the Parys Mountain copper & zinc mine on the island of Anglesey. The mine closed in 1904 and if the re-opening takes place, it will be the first metaliferous mine to open in Britain since the 1970s.For further information visit the Anglesey Mining Website.
• New uranium mine to open 400km outside Adelaide. Australia is second only to Canada in uranium ore output.
• First diamond discovered in Japan.
• Weighting in at 494 carats, the 18th largest known diamond has been discovered in the Letseng mine, in Lesotho
• A diamond mine in the North West Province of South Africa, claims to have discovered a 7000 carat diamond - twice the size of the world's largest known stone (The Cullinan, 3000 carats).
• The 603 carat "Lesotho Promise" - the 10th largest white diamond ever found - has been sold by auction in Antwerp for $12 million. The diamond will be cut into one large heart shape + several smaller stones and is expected to fetch $20 million.
• Four large flawless diamonds, each the size of a marble and weighing in at 366 carats, have been discovered in the Letsong mine, Lesotho, southern Africa. They sold for $8m in Antwerp.
• Weighing in at 750 carats, the seventh largest diamond ever found has been discovered in Sierra Leone. The largest diamond known (3106 carats) was ulyarthed in South Africa in 1905.

Other News

• Following reports of a fireball observed to fall over North Texas, two meteorites have been recovered by local university astronomers.
• A search has begun for fragments of a large meteor that fell over the Battle River area of Alberta, Canada.
• NASA has confirmed that its' Mars explorer Phoenix has discovered water in soil samples taken from a depth of only 5 centimetres below the surface.
• The NASA Mars explorer Phoenix has discovered green and black deposits that may be the volcanic minerals obsidian and olivine. The extinct volcano Olympus Mons on Mars is the largest yet found in the solar system.
• A new manganese silicide mineral has been discovered in the "star-dust" captured from the Gregg-Skjellerup comet. The mineral has been named Brownleeite.
• The Nasa spacecraft Odyssey has detected what may be ancient salt deposits on the southern highlands of Mars.
• The Nasa spacecraft Odyssey has taken photographs of what may be seven cave openings in the side of the Arsia Mons volcano on Mars.
• Reports are being received of a 13m wide 5m deep crater that has appeared 10km from Lake Titicaca in Peru. There is some confusion over whether it has been caused by volcanic activity or by a meteorite impact.
• An oblong strongly magnetic rock weighing 13 ounces has smashed through the roof of a house in New Jersey, USA. Geologists have confirmed that it is an iron meteorite.
• A Pallasite weighing 154lbs and valued at $100,000 has been discovered in a wheatfield in Kansas, USA. Part of the Brenham fall from 10,000 years ago, the meteorite will go on display at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences.
• UNESCO grants World Heritage Site status to the mining landscapes of Cornwall and Devon.