Word: sediments
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...scientists with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh have rooted beneath the sediment of the Wind River valley to unearth a spectacular cache of fossils from the Eocene epoch, that critical time when many progenitors of modern mammals first appeared. Representing some 65 species and including about eight species previously unknown, the bones are the most diverse and perfectly preserved ever discovered from that time. Although they have only just begun to study their find, Richard Stucky, 34, and Leonard Krishtalka, 38, are already convinced that the bones will reveal precious clues to the evolution and extinction...
Trailed behind a ship like a side-scanner, a magnetometer will record such objects even if they are buried in sediment...
Finding the wrecks is often only the start. Sophisticated recovery techniques are needed to get at the loot. Various blowers are sometimes used to dislodge sand. The airlift, a sort of giant vacuum cleaner attached to the search ship via a long plastic tube, removes layers of sediment while divers sift for treasure. Diving methods developed for undersea commercial uses, such as seabed mining and pipeline building, have made it possible to salvage deep-water wrecks. A notable example: H.M.S. Edinburgh, a British cruiser that sank after a Nazi attack in the Barents Sea north of Murmansk, U.S.S.R., during World...
...cause of grass loss is an increase of sediment, which blocks the light that plants need in order to carry on photosynthesis. Another problem is the bay's excess of nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrients "fertilize" the bay and promote the proliferation of algae. When algae decompose, they rob the water of its life-giving oxygen, killing the grasses and the creatures that depend on them. There are areas of the bay-submarine deserts-where nothing at all can live...
Today Sardis is the home of about 25 American and Turkish scholars each summer. They employ modern scientific methods in their research--sediment coring erosion and land use studies--as well as traditional methods of archaeological excavation and scholarly research. None of the antiquities can be taken out of Turkey, so photographs and records of the finds are sent to the U.S. while the more glamorous artifacts are deposited in a museum in the provincial capital of Manisa...