Beach erosion

Close-up view of scarp on beach. Dark organic layers on lower left are truncated by homogeneous sand on the right. Horizontal layers covered both of these units. Powerful waves eroded everything to this small vertical cliff. Note centimeter and inch scale in the lower left. Baldwin County, Alabama. I believe the photographer was A.K. Rindsberg.

Pine Beach, Alabama, 2002

An unusual storm windrow mostly made out of favreinid fecal pellets. Only time I've ever seen this on the beach, though I have seen one in a rock core more than 100 million years old.*

The windrow was quite extensive. It consisted almost entirely of fecal pellets of callianassid burrowing shrimp. This green-gray blanket was deposited by Tropical Storm Isidore. How did the stormsort out just these soft & fragile cylindrical pellets?




*West Appleton oil field, Jurassic Smackover Formation, samples from a couple of miles underground.