Mammals I saw in South Africa

Elephant shrew Epauletted fruit bat Savannah baboon Vervet monkey Scrub hare Tree squirrel Woodland (?) dormouse Unidentified rat Cape porcupine (as roadkill only) Black-backed jackal Wild dog Banded mongoose Dwarf mongoose Small-spotted genet Spotted hyena African wild cat Lion Leopard African elephant Rock hyrax (dassie) Plains zebra Square-lipped (white) rhinoceros Common warthog Hippopotamus Giraffe African … Read more

Cascade Canyon

Following up on Friday’s fold, I wanted to share a few other images from our hike last week in Cascade Canyon of Grand Teton National Park.  Lots of cool exposures of Archean basement rock there. Folds in gneissic banding: Big, angular mafic blocks in a felsic soup: Swarm of granite dikes on a mountainside: Asymmetric … Read more

Rumeli Hisarı

Right after I got to Istanbul on this most recent trip, I took a taxi from my hotel down to the Bosphorus, to check out the Rumeli Hisarı, a fort complex built in 1452 by Sultan Mehmet the II in anticipation of the following year’s siege of Constantinople. It’s constructed at the narrowest point on … Read more

Pine Marten, Adirondacks

Hello everyone, I’m back in my office after 7 weeks away. I had some great travels this summer, to Turkey, Montana, and New England… and great geological photos to share from each of those locations. I’m going to start off with something non-geological, though: something furry and alive! That, my friends, is a pine marten, … Read more

The Ghosts of Evolution, by Connie Barlow

Over Snowmageddon, I read Connie Barlow’s book The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological Anachronisms. [Google Books; Amazon] Barlow isn’t a scientist, but she’s got a scientist in her pocket: Paul Martin of the University of Arizona. In 1982, Martin and Dan Janzen of the University of Pennsylvania published a paper … Read more