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Monthly Archives: August 2011
Foundations for filter feeders
Life is hard is you’re a sessile animal. Admittedly, there’s a certain couch-potato attraction to sitting around all day, waiting for food to blunder into your mouth. But there are lots of challenges that come with being anchored to a … Continue reading
Posted in Invertebrate Paleontology
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A few minor points on the Virginia earthquake
I had not initially intended to do a post on yesterday’s earthquake in Virginia, mostly because there are a lot of structural geologists and seismologists that can do a much better job of describing this event than I can. For … Continue reading
Posted in Carmel Church Geology, Carmel Church Quarry, General Geology
Tagged Earthquake
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A few hours of cleaning…
One of the obstacles we face at Carmel Church is weathering. In Virginia’s wet and variable climate weathering rates are very high. Moreover, at Carmel Church the sediment chemistry is such that the sediment becomes very acidic when exposed to … Continue reading
Posted in Carmel Church odontocetes, Carmel Church Quarry, Chesapeake Group
Tagged Cetaceans
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From the Collections Room (Planocephalosaurus robinsonae)
It has been almost two years since I last talked about VMNH’s collection of Triassic fossils from the fissure-fill deposits of Britain. These sediments were deposited in caves and sinkholes that had been dissolved out of Carboniferous limestones. Apparently Triassic … Continue reading
George Washington, canals, and geology
I grew up in Virginia, in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. At 18, when I went off to Minnesota to start college, I had no intention of returning to Virginia except to occasionally visit relatives. Little did I … Continue reading
Posted in General Geology, Science and Technology
Tagged canals, George Washington, Iron mining
2 Comments
Mysticete squamosal revisited
During our most recent Carmel Church excavation, we collected a squamosal (cheek and ear region) from a small baleen whale (above). Since returning to the museum I’ve had a chance to clean this specimen and compare it to other bones … Continue reading
New donations
After returning from Carmel Church I decided to take a few days off, which is the reason for my lack of recent posts. The pace should pick up a bit next week. But this does give me a chance to … Continue reading
