Word: geologist
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Examining the skullcap, ribs, part of the pelvis and some limb bones taken from the cave, Dr. William King, an Irish geologist, suggested that the fossil might be an extinct form of humanity, a different species. The skull, with its prominent brow ridge, led him to declare that "thoughts and desires which once dwelt within it never soared beyond those of a brute...
...known about. Its only sign on the surface had been a fold, or buckling, in the earth's crust. Many scientists had thought such folds were harmless, formed by an imperceptibly gradual lifting of the ground. But when Ross Stein, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and geologist Robert Yeats of Oregon State University examined the seismic record of fold belts all around the world, they uncovered a different story. Folds, they warned, also grow through repeated earthquakes...
...good news, say scientists, is that last week's tremors had only a mild impact on the San Andreas itself. The bad news is that they increased subterranean stresses closer by. Caltech geologist Kerry Sieh, for one, is worried that the violent release of energy may have adversely affected the Elysian Park system, a deeply buried network of thrust faults directly under Los Angeles. Parts of this system have lain dormant, Sieh says, "since before Abraham." But he cannot predict when the faults might awaken...
Allan Kirk, Crown Butte's chief exploration geologist, does a good job of guiding skeptical visitors around the mine site, explaining the care with which crews have been contouring and reseeding -- "mitigating" is the word -- old mine wreckage. Orange-stained, acidic water, the beginning of Fisher Creek, flows out of an old adit (mine entrance), but Kirk says large-scale plugging with cement and waste rock will prevent such seepage from dribbling out of Henderson's far side and downstream to Yellowstone. Will this work in a watery, fractured mountain? "There are risks in all human activity," says Kirk...
...pieces of the puzzle started falling into place after Marie-Agnes Courty, a geologist with the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, painstakingly examined and sorted the soil samples from the roofs of the abandoned buildings under a binocular microscope. She identified a thin veil of volcanic ash, one quarter of an inch thick, underneath 8 to 20 inches of silt. The layers showed no evidence of having been disturbed by earthworms and also showed patterns characteristic of soil that has settled after a dust storm. It looked like a volcano had erupted, perhaps in nearby Turkey...