Wayne Lusardi

State of Michigan | SOM · Department of Natural Resources

As we expand the search for life beyond Earth, a water-dominated planet, we turn our eyes to other aquatic worlds. Microbial life found in Earth’s many extreme habitats are considered useful analogs to life forms we are likely to find in extraterrestrial bodies of water. Modern-day benthic microbial mats inhabiting the low-oxygen, high-sulfur subme...

The waters of Puerto Rico harbour the remains of thousands of years of human occupation. The island played a key role in the first decades of European exploration of the New World, and its coasts and estuaries have preserved an extensive record of the island's maritime history, before and after the arrival of the Europeans. The objective of this pr...

In the northern Great Lakes region, limestone sediments deposited some 400 million ybp during the Devonian era have experienced erosion, creating karst features such as caves and sinkholes. The groundwater chemical constituents of the shallow seas that produced these rock formations now contribute to the formation of a unique physical (sharp densit...

Beaufort Inlet site 0003BUI was discovered off the coast of North Carolina in the autumn of 1996. Preliminary analysis of the site and its artefact assemblage has led researchers to tentatively identify the shipwreck as the pirate Blackbeard's flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, known to have been lost near the inlet in 1718. A wide variety of artefact...

From 1996 investigators of the Beaufort Inlet shipwreck, off North Carolina, USA, have suggested that the remains are those of the Queen Anne's Revenge, flagship of the pirate Blackbeard. Analysis of the published material, however, indicates that no concrete evidence has yet been found to support this identification and, moreover, shows a strong t...

Corrosion products were examined from typical pewter artifacts originating from six different submerged archaeological sites, dating to between ca. A.D. 1550 and 1733, along the eastern seaboard of North America and in the Caribbean Sea. The artifacts were viewed as 270–450-year long experiments revealing the phases and mechanisms of tin corrosion...

Pewter, a tin-rich alloy, has been widely used for ornamental and utilitarian purposes for the last 400 years because it is durable, relatively easily worked, resistant to corrosion, and similar to silver in appearance. Pewter plates and implements ha ve been recovered and examined from what is believed to be the wreck site of the Queen Anne's Reve...

Metal-bearing artifacts recovered from the wreck site of the Queen Anne's Revenge have been subjected to various oxidizing and reducing conditions during the nearly 300 years that they lay on the sea floor. The base metals respond to these conditions by form- ing corrosion layers of oxides and hydroxides under oxidizing conditions and layers of sul...

Metal-bearing artifacts recovered from the wreck site of the Queen Anne's Revenge have been subjected to various oxidizing and reducing conditions during the nearly 300 years that they lay on the sea floor. The base metals respond to these conditions by forming corrosion layers of oxides and hydroxides under oxidizing conditions and layers of sulfi...

Beaufort Inlet site 003BUI was discovered off the coast of North Carolina in the autumn of 1996. Preliminary analysis of the site and its artefact assemblage has led researchers to tentatively identify the shipwreck as the pirate Blackbeard's flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, known to have been lost near the inlet in 1718. A wide variety of artefacts...

Thunder Bay’s maritime cultural landscape affords a unique glimpse into a community’s heritage revealed through the natural environment and the cultural modifications to that landscape. For millennia, Thunder Bay and Lake Huron have been viewed as both barriers and avenues for sustenance, transport, and commerce. Changing seasons, water levels, and...