Tuff Schist

What’s up? Not the ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii)! To spot this critter, look down. This armored mammal spends most of its time on the floor of its habitat, creating burrows beneath the surface to snooze in during the day. Under the cover of darkness, it emerges to forage for insects like ants and termites. It uses its long tongue to slurp up prey whole. When threatened, it can roll up into a ball, protecting its soft body from predators. Its keratinized scales act as a built-in suit of armor. This species  can be found in parts of Africa including Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa. 

Reginald: *meows in distress*

Narrator: Unfortunately for Reggie, there’s one last step. He’s about to learn that getting wet is nothing – compared to getting dry.”

♫ TRIUMPHANT FANTASY MUSIC ♪

@captioned-vines​

You see this?

That's not a river. That's the South Canal in Mesa, Arizona (Phoenix metro area).

This is a view of the East and South canals. At least half of all the Phoenix metro canals were originally built by the Hohokam (from roughly 200-1400 CE), and are still in use (restored) today.

Phoenix, Arizona actually has more miles (kilometers) of Canals total than both Venice and Amsterdam. No, really. Phoenix has about 180 miles of canals, many of which are built on ancient canal foundations.

below is an aerial view photo taken in the late 1930's of one branch of Phoenix's canal systems:

Also have the "Montezuma Castle," if you need a castle:

we keep learning about older and older examples of indigenous peoples presence here on this continent of Turtle Island—one of the oldest mummies in the world was found here in Nevada, over 10,000 years old

they also fairly recently ‘discovered’ evidence of a massive city in the amazon rainforest

“The city was built around 2,500 years ago, and people lived there for up to 1,000 years, according to archaeologists.

It is difficult to accurately estimate how many people lived there at any one time, but scientists say it is certainly in the 10,000s if not 100,000s.”

Acoma has been continuously inhabited for over 2,000 years. (This view is not close because the people who live in sky city ask for it not to be photographed.) Based on the white sands footprints, we have good reason to believe that the people living here who say that they have been here for 10x as long are accurately reporting their history. You want stuff this old in Europe you gotta go look at cave paintings.

[ Some of the approximately 75 dinosaur tracks discovered at the site. Photo courtesy of Paul Baker / Friends of Dinosaur Valley State Park. ]

"Drought has dried up part of a river in central Texas, revealing 113-million-year-old dinosaur tracks. The prehistoric footprints emerged at Dinosaur Valley State Park, which is located in the town of Glen Rose, southwest of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. As the name suggests, the park already protects other dinosaur footprints. But the tracks that recently emerged are usually hidden under the mud, silt and waters of the Paluxy River. This summer, however, water levels have dipped so low that the prehistoric indentations are now visible. So far, volunteers have counted 75 newly exposed footprints in the parched riverbed. “It has been another very hot, very dry year, so our researchers are trying to take advantage of the drought,” says park superintendent Jeff Davis to the Dallas Morning News’ Sarah Bahari. Two different types of dinosaurs likely made the footprints, according to park officials. One was Acrocanthosaurus, a 15-foot-tall carnivore that weighed approximately 14,000 pounds. As the gargantuan reptile walked around the area on two legs, it left behind the outline of its three-toed feet. The other was Sauroposeidon proteles, which has been the official state dinosaur of Texas since 2009. This long-necked behemoth may have measured up to 100 feet long and weighed closer to 88,000 pounds. It left behind larger, bulbous-shaped tracks that are similar to elephant footprints."

6 hours of olivine picking today (and I managed to catch quite the sunset on my way out of the department). Having exhausted my olivine-only phyric samples, and having gained what I believe is a sufficient understanding of what olivine looks like under the binocular microscope and how to distinguish it from other phases, I have now moved on to some of the cooler samples. This is from a plagioclase megacrystic flood basalt unit in Ethiopia, which I thought was going to cause me some trouble but instead proved to be chock full of (hopefully usable) olivines. The pale crystals are plagioclase, and under the light their cleavage planes are often visible. The greener ones (collected) are olivine, though some of the plagioclases have a greenish tinge (likely parts of plag-ol crystal clots). I believe the pyroxenes are restricted to the groundmass, but we'll see when I have a look under the SEM-EDS after I've mounted my crystals. The grey bits are groundmass - very finely crystallised material with the residual mineral phases that crystallised on eruption/rapid cooling (vs the larger phenocrysts, which crystallised at depth).

Pyrolusite, MnO2, is the most important manganese ore mineral. When it grow in crack or on bedding planes it often forms dendritic or arborescent crystal crowths, seen in this photo. This sample is 11 cm across.

See my previous post about this dude (by the way, thank you all for attention to my little story! 💚).

So, after a little preparation, we saw a complete set of tubular bones of one leg: thigh, tibia and fibular, metatarsal and phalanges. Another metatarsal and possibly tibia lie below. We can see 5 claw phalanges so far, and they are all pretty similar in shape and size. The bones on the right may be part of the forearm of the same being. Also, izolated fragments of ribs protrude from the sandstone block on the sides. Hopefully, we will be able to do a tomography of the sample soon.

Photos by Yaroslav Zheleznov.

So, the preliminary conclusions so far are as follows: it was a relatively small theropod dinosaur about two meters long. We have not yet found anything that could indicate the diet of this animal, therefore, we cannot say for sure if it was a carnivore or a herbivore. Judging by the length and structure of the legs, the dinosaur was a pretty good runner. And, as I wrote earlier, we have not yet established the taxonomic affiliation of it. So far, a cautious assumption is being put forward that this is some kind of Noasauridae (Elaphrosaurin) dinosaur.

In honor of the end of my finals week, I compiled a bunch of random quotes from my geology professor:

“There’s reality, and then there’s Boulder, Colorado.”

“The Earth slowly loses heat to space, so eventually Earth will solidify. Except by that time, the sun will have engulfed us and we’ll be vaporized, so!”

“In a billion years, the Earth will barely be habitable, but to be honest, I’m not really losing sleep over it.”

“What also floats in water? Jesus… and witches, and very small rocks.”

“My grandma is from Ohio— they don’t have rocks there.”

“But you can’t watch them after 10 p.m. because that’s when aliens go home.”

“So quartz-rich rocks are siliceous, clay-rich rocks are argillaceous, and the Black-Eyed Peas are Fergilicious.”

“I can just see everyone’s faces start glazing over when I get talking about national park bathrooms.”

“Don’t feel bad, I used to wear socks with sandals, too.”

“Anticline points up, syncline points down. You can remember this because anticline looks like an A, and syncline— if you sin, you’re going down.”

“Death doesn’t matter when you have credit card debt.”

“I’m an old schist.”

“See, look, that poor sheep will never be fossilized.”

“I would say the best place to find gold is… Jared’s?”

“Saltating benthos— I always thought that would be a good name for a band. I mean, it is kinda like a rolling stone.”

“WHY are we FRENCH?”

“There’s enough death to go around!”

“This is not a part of my regular curriculum, but the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser? That stuff works so well!”

“Do you want to see a picture of the moose that chased me this past weekend?”

Carp are sometimes known as the ‘bottomless pit’ of fishes, and for good reason. Different species of carp can pack away anywhere from 40 to 100% of their body weight in food every day, and most have wide diets that include vegetation, aquatic insects, amphibians, smaller fish, and trash.

(Image: Two bighead carp (Hypophthalmichthys nobilis) by Victor Vrbovsky)