Good lighting on invertebrate fossils

Good lighting on these fossils at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, eh? You’ve got a batch of brachiopods mixed with crinoid columnals and little cornucopia-shaped rugose corals. Maybe some sponge spicules in there, too… This is a great rock because (a) it’s full of well-preserved fossils in a fine-grained matrix, and (b) it’s … Read more

AW50: The tweaked pinkie

My AGU Blogosphere neighbor Evelyn of Georneys fame is hosting this month’s Accretionary Wedge. Her topic? “Field camp memories”… I never attended a bona fide field camp myself, but I attended a lovely “regional field geology” course that my undergraduate alma mater, the College of William & Mary, put on each summer in the Colorado … Read more

Stratigraphy session

What are these students up to? I’ll give you a hint: this is Dinosaur Provincial Park in the Great Plains of southern Alberta. The badlands style topography here offers a nice vertical section through clastic sedimentary rocks originally deposited adjacent to the Western Interior Seaway. On our Canadian Rockies field course in July, my co-instructor … Read more