This time, a paper in Nature July 7th (see www.physorg.com/print229175772.html ) that claims not just push and pull at plate boundaries are responsible for tectonic events but plumes of hot magma rising up from the deep interior of the earth play a role in plate tectonics – but what might cause such upwellings is something else.
Meanwhile, at www.physorg.com/print229098673.html and at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/05/new-peer-reviewed-study-discovers-… is about the Eocene (50 millions years ago) when crocodiles lived within the current Arctic Circle and palm trees flourished in what is now Alaska. Temperatures outside the polar regions should therefore have been even hotter, it is reasoned, hotter than the Poles. Lets fact facts – the Poles don't move – or do they? It seems that in the Eocene a tract of North America was beneath the sea – and former ocean sediments can be found in Alabama. It seems that doubt is now being cast on the warmth at the Poles as it does not seem to have much warmer than it is now (in Alabama).