WorldWide Drilling Resource

25 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® JUNE 2014 Core Samples Reveal Pollen Over 200 Million Years Old Adapted from a University of Zurich Press Release Pollen grains fossilize more easily than flowers and leaves since they are small, hearty, and numerous; these grains are therefore the oldest known fossils from flowering plants. An uninterrupted sequence of fossilized pollen from flowers begins in the Early Cretaceous, about 140 million years ago; so flowering plants were assumed to first evolve around this time. Peter Hochuli and Susanne Feist- Burkhardt from the Paleontological Institute and Museum at the University of Zürich in Switzerland, studied two drilling cores from Weiach and Leuggern, northern Switzerland, which revealed the oldest known fossils of direct ancestors of flow- ering plants. According to researchers, these beautifully preserved pollen grains are evidence these plants evolved 100 million years earlier than previously thought. This is an indication these types of plants possibly originated about 250 million Scientific Drilling Helps Solve Deep Mysteries Adapted from a Consortium for Ocean Leadership Press Release Although it was long thought to be devoid of life, scientific drilling pro- grams have discovered entire ecosys- tems swarming with microbes in the bottom of the deep ocean. New re- search findings published in the Nature Communications journal are helping uncover mysteries about life on earth. Scientists recently documented oxygen disappearing from seawater moving through the deep oceanic crust. This observation was a crucial step in understanding how life in the deep biosphere beneath the seafloor is able to survive and thrive. A team of researchers led by Dr. Beth Orcutt of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences used a sophisticat- ed 470-foot scientific drilling vessel to sample the muddy and sandy sediments covering the rocks on the seafloor. They also drilled into the hard crustal rocks themselves, considered by many to be the largest reservoir of life on the planet. Drilling was utilized in an attempt to understand how microbes can breathe and get necessary energy to live in this remote environment. “One of the biggest goals of the international scientific ocean drilling research community is to understand how life functions in the vast ‘deep biosphere’ buried al ive below the seafloor, but it’s very challenging to access and explore the hard rocks that make up the base of the seafloor. Our results are the first to document the removal of oxygen in the rocky crustal environment...With this information, we can start to unravel the complex mys- tery of life below the seafloor,” said Orcutt. Dr. Beth Orcutt and a team of researchers examine core samples. Photo courtesy of Jennifer T. Magnusson. years ago in the Early Triassic, or even earlier. Many studies have attempted to estimate the age of flowering plants from molecular data to no avail, so this is a significant finding. In a past study, Hochuli and Feist- Burkhardt documented different, but obviously related, flowering plant-like pollen from the Middle Triassic in cores from the Barents Sea. Samples from the present study were found roughly 1860 miles south of this earlier find. “We believe that even highly cautious scientists will now be convinced that flowering plants evolved long before the Cretaceous,” said Hochuli. Flower-like pollen from the Triassic. Deadlines for our August issue: Space Reservation June 25 tthh Ad Copy - Display & Classified July 1 st