030618

any geologist
has plenty of paperweights
need more paper

020518c

do all geologists
have so many paperweights
rock garden time

Looking at rocks through a microscope

Thin section photomicrograph, crossed polarizers, banded particles are plagioclase feldspar that is twinned. Citronelle Field, Rodessa Formation, Cretaceous, South Alabama, more than 2 miles below the surface.

080316c

The last straw, limestone felt, was being taken for granite.

High school and geology

A reminder just showed up in my inbox of a message that I never actually received through my high school alumni website. The message was sent three years ago. Cyberspace is weird and wonderful.

I have never been back to my high school and never seriously considered going. I suppose if I still lived in town I would have gone to some alumni events, even though I only had a few friends in high school, but as it is I live far away and my friends and family are no longer in that town (Charlottesville Virginia).

I was warned yesterday that I'm going to be interviewed by some college students about how we know the age of some rocks the state. That won't be a problem, but it might be a challenge to make the answer seem interesting. It is for a documentary film that they are making. Because the answer is that some spores whose age we know showed up in the rocks in Alabama and some shells whose age we know showed up in the rocks in Alabama; I will be hard-pressed to set the blood pumping faster with that. Of course, ultimately, we know the ages because of volcanoes! Volcanic ash beds and ancient lava flows can be dated using unstable isotopes. That's where all of the absolute ages come from.

You like these rock pictures don't you?

Void in carbonate mound. Bottom part is filled with micropelletal cement and a few chunks that fell off the roof of the void. Upper part filled with typical void filling calcite cement. All of the calcite is stained pink with alizarin red S.

I love petrography

So much here I can't even. Snail to the lower left. Weird critter to the lower right, encrusted by a shelled ameba (round white thing). Chunk (intraclast) to the upper right, with a bryozoan sticking out to the left. & it's a joy to he eye.

Never did a calendar before

The Alabama Museum of Natural History calendar (2013) features 12 photomicrographs by me of rocks. Pretty ones.