The lake of Alleghe in the valley of Cordévole is today exactly 242 years old. The moment of the birth of the lake is well known, at 7:02 in the morning of January 11, 1771 the river flowing through the valley became dammed by a landslide coming from the mountain Piz. Fig.1. General view of [...]

In the 19th century  the small island of Gilolo (today Halmahera), located in the Moluccas archipelago, was still one of the most remote places on earth. In march 1858 a letter delivered to the nearest post office, located on the island of Ternate, was first sent  to Singapore. From there a ship of the “British [...]

In the early morning of December 28, 1908 a 30 to 42 seconds long earthquake with a reconstructed magnitude of 6.7-7.2 hit the Italian cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria. The earthquake damaged 90% of the buildings and broken pipes fuelled a firestorm, an aftereffect known from many other earthquakes; however one of the most [...]

The tsunami of Indonesia 2004 and Japan 2011 showed that they are a common element associated with earthquakes. Modern databases list more than 2.000 tsunami events worldwide in the last 4.000 years, most of them recorded in historic documents, chronicles and even myths – and yet tsunami deposits in the geological record seem to be [...]

Movies that deal with the Armageddon caused by the impact of a meteorite on earth have the great advantage that they can almost completely define the scenario – until now almost no references exist how such an event would occur in reality. Large impacts were relatively rare in historic times; the most famous (and still [...]

One of the most astounding scientific discoveries of the 20th century was initiated by a simple phone call, early in the morning of December 22, 1938. “Miss Latimer, we got here one and a half ton of fish, maybe you are interested?“ Marjorie Courtaney-Latimer, curator of the little museum of East London (South Africa), went [...]

“High up in the North in the land called Svithjöd, there stands a rock. It is hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousands years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has been thus worn away, then a single day of eternity will have [...]

Tat: “Does the earth seem to you unmoving, father?” Hermes: “No, my son. It is the only thing full of movement, and at the same time stationary. Would it not be absurd for the nourisher of all things, the producer of and begetter of all, to be motionless?…[]“ “Corpus Hermeticum” 100-300 A.D. According to Aristotelian [...]

“History of Geology” will be dedicated until the end of the world year to two topics – the evolution of paleoart and – appropriately – the supposed age and end of the earth. A first glimpse on paleoart introduced the early soft-tissue reconstructions of animals, however also other organisms are worth to be studied, reconstructed [...]

The music-video “Mutual Core” (2011) by Björk, starring hot tectonic forces and sensual strata, is by far not the only examples of how geology and paleontology could inspire musicians and songwriters. There is something for everybody, from rap to classic music, from hard rock to blues, from the Archean to the Anthropocene. The German music [...]