The Hawaiian crow has been revealed as a skilled tool user, confirmed by testing the last members of this endangered species that survive in captivity. The finding suggests its behavior is tantalizingly similar to that of the famous tool-using New Caledonian crow and has implications for the evolution of tool use and intelligence in birds.

New Caledonian (NC) crows are the most sophisticated tool manufacturers other than humans. The diversification and geographical distribution of their three Pandanus tool designs that differ in complexity, as well as the lack of ecological correlates, suggest that cumulative technological change has taken place. To investigate the possibility that high-fidelity social transmission mediated this ...

Uranium-lead data indicate that the high-pressure granulitic and charnockitic nuclei within the medium-grade metamorphic complex of the Peruvian coastal area must be related to an orogenic event 2 x 10(9) years ago. As in western Africa and Brazil, this old granulitic basement is reworked by Late Precambrian orogeny. Its presence along the Peru-Chile Trench must be taken into account in interpr...

The Chazy, Black River and Trenton Groups are a well studied sequence of fossiliferous limestones, dolostones and sandstones in the Champlain Valley of New York, Vermont and southern Quebec. These rocks record shallow water cyclic sedimentation in the foreland basin of Laurentia prior to and during the initial stages of the Taconic Orogeny. This field trip reviews the stratigraphy of these unit...