Our “Saharan Atlantic ocean” paper has just been featured in GEOLOGY’s “Research Focus” article in the March issue. The focus article is entitled “Roadmap to continental rupture: Is obliquity the route to success?” is written by Cythia Ebinger and Jolante van Wijk and is available as open access. This is fantastic news!
Update #1,2,3,4,5: So by now, there’s been quite some science (and popular) media buzz with both Sydney Uni and GFZ Potsdam having released press info on our article – it’s been overwhelming. Spiegel Online (one of the largest German online news outlets) & Sueddeutsche Zeitung (also one of the largest papers) reported in Germany even going a bit beyond the standard press release texts. As Sascha and I hoped, our hypothetical “Saharan Ocean” image (see here) facilitated the take up of the story quite a bit.
According to Altmetric, the article is currently ranking as #7 in terms of impact which makes it one of the highest ever scores for articles published in GEOLOGY.
Links here (I’m updating those from time to time):
- ScienceDaily: How earth might have looked like
- Daily Mail: A twist of plates (interesting comments that one)
- SpiegelOnline: Die unmoegliche Nase Suedamerikas
- Sueddeutsche Zeitung: Die Welt die niemals war
- Sydney University front page news: How the world missed out on a Saharan Ocean
- Helmholtz Zentrum – Bild des Monats/Image of the month
- International Business times: Map of How Earth would have looked…
- Journal de science (French): Tectonique des plaques : la Terre aurait pu être très différente
- Der Standart (Austria): Warum Nordwestafrika nicht Teil Suedamerikas ist
- Scinexx (DE): Afrika: Raetsel der Form geklaert
- Nu.nl: Aarde had bijna twee Afrika’s gehad
- Phys.org: What sculpted Africa’s margin
- Corriere de la Sierra (IT): La foto del giorno
- motherboard.Vice.com: The African continent that almost was
- science20.com: Gondwana: What sculpted Africa’s margins 130 Million years ago?
- Sascha gave an interview to RBB Radio Kultur (Berlin/Brandenburg region): Woher hat Afrika seine Form? (in German, link to mediathek)
- A colleague provided me a link to NOS.nl – a popular Dutch news site: Sahara ad oceaan kunnen zijn
- CBC Canada’s Quirks and Quarks: I was interviewed by Bob McDonald on “How continents stay in shape” (link to website with podcast).
- Our map and an article on are featured on BigThink’s Strange Maps blog post.
- [2014-05-12] We’re featuring in this month’s GFZ Potsdam’s GeoForschungsZeitung: “Kontinentales Tauziehen” [PDF link, in German] and link to the GFZeitung [GFZ Potsdam, in German].
- Reverse Calenture – Drowning in the Sahara
