check out these buttes!
howdy folks!!
i'm here in colorado now; been here about a week, actually. we got the day off today, and it figures, because today's the first day it hasn't been blazing hot. but i got nothin' to complain about, folks, because it's totally amazing being out here doing field work.
so what exactly am i doing out here? i'm working with folks from oberlin, gustavus adolphus college and uc riverside, and we're trying to figure out what formed these big buttes out in prairie. they're called tepee buttes, and we know for sure that they formed 76 million years ago during the late cretaceous when the great plains were actually an ocean called the great western interior seaway. the buttes are the remnants of methane seeps that were probably caused by faulting during mountain building, but no one really knows exactly what was going on when they were active.
the buttes are chock full of clam, ammonite and worm tube fossils, and my personal task is to take measurements on the clam fossils. i count them, measure their sizes and orientations, and what they're made out of. my professor's specialty is taphonomy, which is the study of how fossils form, so understanding how the fossils formed might give us some insight to how they lived.
the past few days have been dang tiring, for sure. we get up around 6:30 every morning, have breakfast and then head out to the field (literally, a cow pasture) and spend all day out there working on our stuff. we get back to colorado college (who's putting us up for the duration) around 5:00, have dinner and then usually have a two or so hour long meeting. by 9:00 i'm usually wiped, but then it's beer drinkin' time. if i had to name two things that every geologist is guaranteed to loved, they're rocks and beer. spending all day out in the sun makes one quite a lightweight, let me tell you...one beer is usually enough to make me crash. anyway...
this is one the fields we're working in. i really love the windmill and well, and so does the herd of cows that wander in every afternoon. we were warned to steer clear of the cows, but i don't know if that was for our sake or the cows... see the buttes in the background?
this is a close-up of one of the big buttes. they sort of just rise up out the prairie.
i spend most of the day crouched over one of these. i toss it randomly onto a rock outcrop and then count up the clams. honestly, by about 2:30, i'm goin' nuts from staring so closely at such ugly rock, but the work is actually fun and we've all learned to have fun with the walkie talkies...
a close-up of the clamies. see them?
i just like this picture of hilary. she does a lot of surveying, and she's my roommate.
pretty flower!
one last thing...scott the camera dude wants us to make t-shirts that say "hey! check out these buttes!" across the chest.
i'm here in colorado now; been here about a week, actually. we got the day off today, and it figures, because today's the first day it hasn't been blazing hot. but i got nothin' to complain about, folks, because it's totally amazing being out here doing field work.
so what exactly am i doing out here? i'm working with folks from oberlin, gustavus adolphus college and uc riverside, and we're trying to figure out what formed these big buttes out in prairie. they're called tepee buttes, and we know for sure that they formed 76 million years ago during the late cretaceous when the great plains were actually an ocean called the great western interior seaway. the buttes are the remnants of methane seeps that were probably caused by faulting during mountain building, but no one really knows exactly what was going on when they were active.
the buttes are chock full of clam, ammonite and worm tube fossils, and my personal task is to take measurements on the clam fossils. i count them, measure their sizes and orientations, and what they're made out of. my professor's specialty is taphonomy, which is the study of how fossils form, so understanding how the fossils formed might give us some insight to how they lived.
the past few days have been dang tiring, for sure. we get up around 6:30 every morning, have breakfast and then head out to the field (literally, a cow pasture) and spend all day out there working on our stuff. we get back to colorado college (who's putting us up for the duration) around 5:00, have dinner and then usually have a two or so hour long meeting. by 9:00 i'm usually wiped, but then it's beer drinkin' time. if i had to name two things that every geologist is guaranteed to loved, they're rocks and beer. spending all day out in the sun makes one quite a lightweight, let me tell you...one beer is usually enough to make me crash. anyway...
this is one the fields we're working in. i really love the windmill and well, and so does the herd of cows that wander in every afternoon. we were warned to steer clear of the cows, but i don't know if that was for our sake or the cows... see the buttes in the background?
this is a close-up of one of the big buttes. they sort of just rise up out the prairie.
i spend most of the day crouched over one of these. i toss it randomly onto a rock outcrop and then count up the clams. honestly, by about 2:30, i'm goin' nuts from staring so closely at such ugly rock, but the work is actually fun and we've all learned to have fun with the walkie talkies...
a close-up of the clamies. see them?
i just like this picture of hilary. she does a lot of surveying, and she's my roommate.
pretty flower!
one last thing...scott the camera dude wants us to make t-shirts that say "hey! check out these buttes!" across the chest.