Rattle, then boom, in the Andes

The best field areas are the ones that you haven't seen yet

Single-celled trace fossils?

Thanks for giving kids the Earth (Science)
In October, we happily took part in the DonorsChoose Social Media Challenge, teaming up with All of My Faults are Stress-Related and Eruptions to create a geoblog generosity trifecta. We got amazing results, with geoblogs readers giving $8660 to our challenge. Part of that money was contributed

Casting a Wider Net: Opportunities for Enhancing Diversity in the Geosciences
Along with D.N. Lee, I'll be convening a session on Casting a wider net: Promoting gender and ethnic diversity in STEM at Science Online 2010. To start discussion going in preparation for the session, DNL is hosting the next edition of the Diversity in Science carnival

The amazing disappearing asymmetric magnetic reversals
Interpreting the record of the Earth's magnetic field preserved in rocks - palaeomagnetism - is a complicated business, but at the heart of it is one very simple assumption: except when it is reversing, if you average over a few thousand years or so, the geomagnetic fiel

Stuff I linked to on Twitter last week
More interesting links that I've shared via Twitter over the past seven days. If I had to highlight just one you should really click on, take some time to be wowed by the HiRISE imagery of Mars over at the Big Picture - they are jaw-droppingly beautiful. And seismogenic - also known as Julian from Harmonic Tremors - earned all the geonerd cred, and everyone's insane jealously, by filming

Earthquakes within plates: we don't know when, and we may not know where
Ed has already given the lowdown on a new study in Nature which might lead to a rethink on earthquake hazards in the continental interior. Plate tectonics treats plates as entirely rigid entities, but continental crust is too weak, and too ridd