Notes from the Field, Pt. 2

He's been gone a week now and is apparently hard at work. Here are some excerpts from his latest email. Given the poor connection, the time crunch and lack of proof-reading, we kinda have to forgive the quality of his composition which isn't up to his usual standard. I'm happy just to hear from him and share his adventure a little.

The weather:

We are working further afield each day, and today at noon were probably 2 miles away when the clouds moved in. They come fast here, and we didn’t have much warning, but I could see they were bringing rain. We crouched by the biggest outcrops we could find and let it come, but after 15 minutes we were thoroughly soaked anyway. We continued mapping and over the next couple of hours the clouds parted a bit and the wind occasionally kicked up, so we dried out ok. By the time we reached camp at 6:30, we were dry. This evening, though, it has rained off and on for the past couple of hours. Afternoon thunder showers seem to be common here, and explain why we see all the green, though short, grasses.

The geology:

The vegetation is not enough to form much cover, so the rocks are usually well exposed, although the complex folding of these strata makes figuring out the geology really difficult. There are a lot of fossil wood casts in the sandstone beds and I have found several small logs. Since the beds are Permian, these are very primitive trees, probably cycads or similar tree fern types. Typically there are just alternating beds of carbonaceous siltstone (black) and sandstone (tan or light gray) so distinguishing rock units is easy enough, but these repeat so frequently it is almost impossible to tell them apart to know where in the entire sequence any one bed lies. Exposures are good along sides of hills and in gullies, but many flat pediment surfaces are all just alluvium, so we will be extrapolating our map units quite a bit in some areas. I figure this area was dominantly fluvial plains with meandering streams and interwoven swamps, and that these migrated through time, so the beds are thin, variable, and abundantly interspersed with siltstones and sandstones and occasional conglomerates from the channels. But now the beds are rumpled like a carpet that has been shoved completely against one wall, and we rarely find beds dipping less than 40 degrees, many being vertical.

The dinosaurs (in response to my question of whether he'd discovered any dinosaurs yet):

Since beds are Permian, no, we will not find any dinosaur remains, as the period just preceded their reign.

Dang.

The internet:

Enough...I have to finish work and this connection is a real pain.