Atmospheric and Terrestrial Sciences

The Science Behind Earthquakes

Submitted by Mónica Ivelisse Feliú-Mójer on

Mónica Ivelisse Feliú-Mójer's picture
Earthquake in Puerto Rico
Ruins from Puerto Rico's earthquake in 1918.

Two months ago we received 2010 with the news that neighboring Haiti was struck with a 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Not recovered from Haiti’s situation, in the last days of February, Chile also experiences an earthquake; this time an 8.8 one and nowadays they are still getting aftershocks. After all these events have you ever asked yourself what causes an earthquake? Can Puerto Rico be struck by an earthquake? Fortunately, the answers to all these questions and the science behind earthquakes are the focus of the research of geologists like Dr. Daniel Laó Dávila and the Puerto Rico Seismic Network.

Aktiogavialis puertoricensis: fossilized history

Submitted by Daniel Alfonso Colón-Ramos on

Daniel Alfonso Colón-Ramos's picture
Gavial
Gavial

Gavialis gangeticus, from the Indian subcontinent, is the only living gharial species related to the Puerto Rican gharial

28 million years ago "pepinianos", as the residents from he Puerto Rican town of San Sebastián are known, could frolic in the shores of their hometown. This is because 28 million years ago the now landlocked town of San Sebastián was a seashore town. Pepinianos looked very different then, though. There were no plazas, or traffic jams, or town fairs... as a matter of fact, 28 million years ago there were no humans, not in Puerto Rico, not anywhere else.

What San Sebasti·n did have were gharial: very large crocodiles basking in its shores.

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