Adventures in Ibex!

Work has progressed rather slowly this week. Excessive heat and afternoon thunderstorms have limited our work time to the mornings, and much of our chalking at Hintze's section L was washed away. Frustration runs high but I've re-evaluated my plans and I think I've figured a way around the problems. We can into Delta a day earlier than planned to get new supplies, including flagging, which won't be washed away by rain.

We had some more adventures with wildlife this week. While playing scrabble one evening, I noticed a little snakey peeking out at us from beneath a juniper tree. At first we thought it was a rattlesnake, but we discovered that he had no rattle! I know now that he was a gopher snake. Here's a video of him making his way slowly through our camp:



When packing up our tent to head into town, I discovered a scorpion hiding in the corner! This was probably the most terrifying event of the week, as scorpions are the only creature I'm actually nervous about. I have no idea how it got in our tent or how long it had been there, but I'm glad neither of us got stung. Here's a photo:



A golden eagle followed us down the road for a couple of minutes one morning. It was huge and glorious! We also saw a couple of packs of pronghorn antelope. Katherine got a picture of some of them:



Today is Pioneer Day, a glorious Mormon holiday that celebrates the arrival of Brigham Young and the original Mormon settlers to the Salt Lake Region. I realized yesterday that this holiday also marks the 1 year anniversary of my move from Ohio to Riverside. Here's a photo of Katherine looking a little bit like a pioneer:

Journey Through the Past - Pt. 2

The Confusion Range is incredibly beautiful. This photo was taken on the hillside above our campsite the first day we arrived.

Things are going really well. Katherine and I have managed to not go completely insane from the isolation, and in fact, I've been enjoying the remoteness of the region.

We spent most of the week at one locality, "CAMP." All of the localities that I will be collecting at were established in the 50's and 60's by an old time geologist named Lehi Hintze. He measured and marked each section. Here's a photo of me at the start of his CAMP section, measured in 1965.



So far we've measured and described the CAMP section. Collecting and sampling won't begin until we've measured and described all of the localities we'll be studying.

There's actually been some excitement out here, despite the fact that we're totally isolated. I've encountered two rattlesnakes, both while I was trying to find a place to pee. I startled the first one and he slithered into the bushes and rattled angrily at me. We documented him:



And here's the second snake I ran into. He's snoozing under a juniper branch.



We've seen tons of cute lizards and hear coyotes howling every night. There stars have been so beautiful every night. I love it out here.

Today was our first day in town since last weekend. We desperately needed showers and contact with other humans has been good for us. Unfortunately we're deep in Mormon country and I can't help but feel creeped out by most of the people here in Delta, UT. Deseret, UT is only a couple of miles from here.

Here are some more photos from the field:


Katherine "Snakeface" Steelman hanging out in camp.


These are some of clams that I'm studying.

Katherine and I signed up for PO Box in Delta so that we can receive mail. It would be awesome to get letters! Here's our address:

P.O. Box #119
Delta, UT 84624

Journey Through the Past - Pt. 1

Field work is about to begin!

Yesterday my field assistant Katherine and I began our Ordovician adventure. We left Riverside and headed up to Ely, NV - a wild west town if there ever was one. On our way, we passed through Sin City and skirted the NV-375, the Extraterrestrial Highway, which runs through central Nevada and past Area51. Here's some documentation:



I'm excited to begin the actual field work, which will take place out in the Ibex region of the Great Basin, in Utah. I'm going to be studying aspects of the Ordovician Radiation by examining the diversity of gastropods and bivalves through a Middle Ordovician succession of rocks.

Here's the non-paleontologist description: Life in the oceans experienced a major radiation during the Ordovician period (roughly 480-440 million years ago). I'm going to study this radiation event by collecting fossils of ancient snails and clams preserved in rocks in Utah, which was equatorial beachfront property during the Ordovician. I'm also going to try to reconstruct what the overall environments and ecosystems that these clams and snails looked like, in order to better understand how marine ecosystems have changed through time. The ocean looked a lot different back then but understand the ancient systems can help us better understand modern ocean ecosystems.

Here are some more photos!



This is Katherine checking out the menu of a surprisingly good Chinese restaurant in Ely, NV.


This is the wonderful Hotel Nevada, where we stayed last night.


We're going to be camping way out in the middle of nowhere by the outcrops so we won't have an cell phone or internet service, but we'll be heading into town once a week for showers and resupplies. I'll update the blog and my flickr photos as often as possible. You can check out the flickr photos here.

I also made a google map of the field localities, which you can check out here.

I know you can't watch the video here, but you can go to the youtube page and see it!

Coast to Coast

The absolute best billboard of the drive back, I sadly did not snap a picture of. But it was for an "indian

trading post" and we had seen a lot of ads for various things there. My favorite was a plainly-painted board that proclaimed "LIVE CACTUS"! Can't get much better than that...

A few other pictures from the journey including a giant cow in Flagstaff, Sunset Crater and lava flow, Meteor Crater (I can totally see why they didn't get what it was at first) and Petrified Forest National Park, AZ. Robyn would be glad to know we ate in some fun diners as well, my favorite was the scorpion sandwich I had in New Mexico...

A few more pictures from our day in the field at NAPC and every Headlines TA's favorite, "Dunky" from the Cincinnati Museum.

More from green, leafy DC full of thunderstorms and lightning bugs at some point...

NAPC2009!!!

I posted some pictures from NAPC on my flickr account. Check them out!