#laterite

2. Tsingy Rouge, Diego Suarez, North Madagascar

Tsingy Rouge. Not the famous one. The other one — smaller, redder, and somehow more impossible. The earth here decided to be the color of fire.

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Earth Bit Lab — Madagascar Series: The Island The World Left Behind**

Most people know Madagascar for its lemurs. Almost no one knows about the rest.

A stone forest too sharp to walk through. A crater lake where every tree leans inward. White dunes meeting ancient coral reefs in the middle of nowhere.

These are the places Madagascar kept entirely for itself.

Not the spider itself, obviously, since she is staying deep underground away from the heat and daylight, but the very distinctive entrance to her burrow, disguised with fine laterite gravel and surrounded by carefully selected larger pieces. At night, she'll listen for the sound of anybody walking past, and lunge out to seize them.

Kwonkan wonganensis is a Anamid that lives in y-shaped burrows in open woodland in what is now the Avon Wheatbelt, so it's only found in the surviving reserves.  It was described in 1977 by Australian arachnologist Barbara York Main.

There were a LOT of these burrows either side of the track in Rogers Reserve.

Step-by-step laterite

Not long ago I have shown you a ferricrete from Dee Why Beach in Sydney. After receiving many questions regarding its formation, I thought I give you a step by step insight into the process.

1) First, minerals breakdown to form clay and in the process release iron oxide (rust) which precipitates around some particle (organic matter, gravel, sand etc.) or forms a patch (photo 1).

2) This promotes further nucleation of iron oxide around that centre which results in growth and iron oxide nodule formation. With time as water sips through this soil profile more and more rust is added onto the nodule and so they grow bigger and bigger (photo 2).

3) Nodules eventually get so big that they start to touch and so they connect to each other and form horizon (broad horizontal chunk) as shown in the lower photo.

These form within soil under our feet when conditions are right, so you don’t usually get such 3D exposure. However, here are at the beach constant wave action has washed off all the dirt and clay leaving just the hard ferricrete behind.

P.S.

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ANA and ASI uncover 100 laterite pieces at Ta Prohm, advancing restoration and study of the temple's foundation and ancient construction techniques.

via Khmer Times, 08 February 2024: The Apsara National Authority and the Archaeological Survey of India have made significant progress in the restoration of Ta Prohm temple’s Southern Gate in Angkor Archaeological Park, uncovering nearly 100 pieces of laterite and assessing the gate’s foundation. The Apsara National Authority (ANA), the state agency in charge of managing the Angkor Archaeological…