This story is at https://phys.org/news/2024-08-refutes-theory-earth-continents.html …. I like the headline here as it starts out by saying the consensus opinion of how the continents formed is a theory. Theories come and go – and now we have another. Gary also sent in an alternative link to the story. Hernandez Uribe has developed a new model which refutes the leading theory on how earth’s continents formed. He is based at the University of Illinois in Chicago. His team made use of computer models and simulation to study the formation of magmas – which are thought to hold clues to the origin of the continents. He looked for magmas that match the compositional signature of rare mineral deposits known as zircons. These are thought to date back between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago. Last year there was a research paper that claimed zircons could only form via subduction processes – where two continental plates collide, under the sea, causing earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Ther reshape the coastlines of continents. Hernandez Uribe contends that subduction is not necessary in order to form zircons – undermining a fashionable point of view. He found that zircon minerals could form via high pressure and high temperatures. He left out the possibility of a catastrophic event but one may think that in the back of the head – but see also https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01489-z …
At https://phys.org/news/2024-08-greenland-fossil-discovery-stuns-scientists.html … in spite of the hype in the headline the story is somewhat less dramatic. A new study provides direct evidence the centre of Greenland’s ice sheet melted in the recent geological past. It was home to a green tundra landscape, it is inferred – during mid Pleistocene. We then get a view of the fossils discovered in an ice core known as the Two Mile Time Machine, and the title of a book by Bill Alley in the 1990s. I’m not sure if willows and poppies grow in the tundra but they are some of the fossils. The thrust of the article though is that we should all be scared of global warming as the fossils show what might happen on Greenland if there is runaway warming. The elephant in the room is the word if – as for the moment, at least, there is no evidence of melting ice on Greenland. In spite of what you might read in the propaganda sheets. Most of the press release is alarmist so it is probably better to read the actual research paper at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2407465121 …
It seems an ice core had been sitting in storage since 1993. A new generation of scientists decided to have another look and they discovered that sediment at the bottom of the two mile time machine contained willow wood, insect parts, fungi and a poppy seed. In other words, the ice sheet didn’t exist on Greenland at the time, which is why the core was only two miles deep. In fact, I vaguely remember, at the time, a reference to the fact no ice existed at the bottom of the core – but it was apparently forgotten, it seems. I wonder why. One might even suspect the alarmists did not like the implication that it might have been warmer in the Pleistocene – but why they think it fits their agenda in 2024 is another mystery. All the discovery shows is that climate on Greenland has changed in the past and there could be a number of reasons why – which do not necessarily involve gradual global warming.
See also https://www.sciencealert.com/fossils-from-the-heart-of-greenland-reveal-a-greater-threat-of-rising-seas … here the headline claims the discovery of a green landscape in Greenland during mid-Pleistoce ‘reveals a greater threat of rising seas’ – which is pandering to the alarmist claim that if the Greenland ice sheet melted sea levels would catastrophically rise. One of those over used memes that are forever vented by the media and its lackeys.
Also, as a matter of interest, at https://crev.info/2024/08/green-greenland-was-good/ … we have the same story with a Creationist slant. We learn all the fossils were definitely tundra related. The poppys seed was that of an Arctic Poppy, for example. It seems the green greenland has now been dated to 400,000 years ago, which is still within the original estimate. The report however is spoilt, as always on Creationist web sites, by the idea it must be much more recent – within the Biblical numbers scenario. Basically, the author doesn’t think much of the Climate Change Agenda, the main aspect of his criticism. either. Hence, he is worth reading just for that.