Category Archive 'Grand Canyon'

19 Nov 2018

Grand Canyon Footprints

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Live Science has an interesting vertebrate paleontology story.

About 315 million years ago — long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth — an early reptile scuttled along in a strangely sideways jaunt, leaving its tiny footprints embedded in the landscape, new research finds.

It’s anyone’s guess why this ancient, clawed critter walked sideways (although experts have several ideas), but one thing is certain: The animal’s prints represent the oldest-known vertebrate track marks ever discovered in Grand Canyon National Park, said Stephen Rowland, a professor of geology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who is studying the fossilized trackway.

The trackway is so old, that it was made a mere 5 million years after the first known reptiles emerged on Earth, just as the ancient supercontinent Pangaea was forming. “This is right in that little window of the very first reptiles,” Rowland told Live Science. “We don’t know much about that real early history.” [Photos: Dinosaur Tracks Reveal Australia’s ‘Jurassic Park’]

The research, which has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, was presented at the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Oct. 17.

The trackway — preserved on a slab of sandstone measuring about 3.2 feet long and 18 inches wide (1 meter by 45 centimeters) — contains 28 prints from the mystery animal’s front and back feet. A friend of Rowland’s first noticed the fossilized tracks in 2016 while hiking along the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail, located on the Manakacha formation in northern Arizona.

When Rowland visited the site in May 2017, the 2-inch-long (5 cm) prints befuddled him. At first glance, the track marks looked as if they were left by two animals walking side by side, “which is very bizarre for an early reptile,” he said. After lying awake at night, turning the images over in his mind, Rowland had an epiphany: The animal that left the tracks was moving sideways.

RTWT

10 Aug 2017

Grand Canyon 1880

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A tourist leans over to get a view of the Grand Canyon, 1880.

03 Dec 2013

Grand Canyon Filled With Fog

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About once in ten years the Grand Canyon will temporarily fill with fog. American Digest has some excellent photos from a couple of days ago when the “ocean of fog” effect occurred.

11 Nov 2007

Plague Kills Grand Canyon Park Biologist

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AP:

A wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park likely died from the plague through his exposure to wild animals that can carry the disease, the National Park Service said Friday.

Eric York, 37, was found dead in his home Nov. 2. Following his death, about 30 people who came in contact with him were given antibiotics as a precaution.

While authorities were uncertain about how York became infected, officials said that the biologist was at a greater risk to the sometimes-fatal disease through his exposure to wild rodents and mountain lions.

Park Service officials initially said they suspected the plague or hantavirus, another sometimes-fatal disease endemic to the Southwest, because of York’s interests and hobbies.

Health officials in Arizona warned in September that the plague appeared to be on the rise and that more cases were likely after an Apache County woman was infected with the disease.

While Arizona health officials say the disease appears to be on the rise in the state, CDC spokeswoman Lola Russell said plague cases weren’t on the rise nationally.

Plague is transmitted primarily by fleas and direct contact with infected animals. When the disease causes pneumonia, it can be transmitted from an infected person to a non-infected person by airborne cough droplets.

Cases are treatable with antibiotics, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that up to 50 percent are fatal if the disease causes pneumonia. The Coconino County Medical Examiner has said York’s lungs were filled with fluid and his body showed signs of pneumonia.

The autopsy confirmed that the cause of death was bubonic plague. The disease is endemic to much of the Western United States.


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