Yesterday, I took a hike with some friends in Shenandoah National Park, and we encountered a bunch of interesting insects. I took a couple of photos, the best of which I'll share here.

Monarch butterfly caterpilar:


Moth Butterfly and hover-flies enjoying thistle nectar:

Labels: arthropods, national parks, shenandoah

All photos in this post by Rockies student Charlie Corrick.

Talking S-folds, vergence, and Pumpelly's Rule in the Bridger Range:


Hiking uphill and down-sequence in the Bridger Range:


Describing the Kootenai Formation:


Jared gets eaten by Big Mike:


Joel with a few columns of basalt:


Post-M.O.R.-tour, with the guide:


Victoria and a Triceratops horn:


Group at M.O.R., with Tyrannosaurus for scale:


Calcified bat, Lewis & Clark Caverns:


Inside the cave:


Beartooth Plateau:


Amanda enjoys the view:


Camp at Pebble Creek in Yellowstone:


Watching for wolves, Yellowstone:


Bison:


Obsidian at Obsidian Cliff:


Longhorned beetle that landed on our geologic map of Yellowstone:


More to come...

Labels: arthropods, dinosaurs, fossils, glacial landforms, mammals, montana, wyoming, yellowstone

Yesterday, I asked you to see what you see here:


And today, I shall tell you what I saw...

Here's what it reminds me of:

...An Olenellid trilobite (slightly deformed)!

Here, I'll sketch it for you:


Garry Hayes came closest to my vision by suggesting the foam pattern resembled Marella splendens, Walcott's "lace crab" of the Burgess Shale.

Labels: art, arthropods, contest, fossils, structure

My second day in Montana this summer, Lily and I took a hike in the Gallatin Range, in Leverich Canyon. There, I turned over a boulder of Archean gneiss (bearing a sweet isoclinal fold) and found two little pseudoscorpions:





My apologies for the blurry, pixelated quality of the photos: these guys were small and they moved fast! Each pseudoscorpion was about 3 mm in length. These are the best two photos out of 20 or so that I shot: they were not easy to capture in digital form.

Pseudoscorpions are members of one of my favorite groups of animals: the non-spider arachnids. This is a surprisingly diverse group that includes (Wikipedia links) pseudoscorpions, tailless whip-scorpions, harvestmen, solpugids, and vinegarroons. (Mites and ticks are also arachnids, as well as a host of less common groups both extinct and extant.) I've seen examples of all of them in the wild except for the solpugids. They're really neat creatures, hints of the wide range of biodiversity in the arthropod phylum.

Labels: archean, arthropods, montana, structure

We now return you to our originally-scheduled photo-travelogue...

On the second day of our Andean mountain tour in Ecuador, Lily and I set out from Tambopaxi Lodge, our comfortable accomodation in Cotopaxi National Park:



We were going for a day-hike, checking out the scenery with our guide Diego while we acclimatized for some more serious mountain climbing in the days to come. The official goal of our hike was to check out two naturally-flowing cold springs, where the agua was pura, and safe to drink. Here's the first one, issuing from the base of a lava flow, with me awkwardly twisting around to raise a bottle of the good stuff:



Spring #2, of greater volume:


Some shots of the scenery:







The extinct volcano Sincholagua:


Me with Sincholagua (and lower cloud cover) in the distance:

A look back at Pasochoa, which we had climbed the day before:


And Cotopaxi itself, the charismatic, active volcano which draws most people to the park:


Critters:

A big insect, maybe a grylloblattid?


Feral horses:


We also saw some cool "primitive" plants (plants with ancient lineages):

Liverworts:


Sphenopsids:


Club mosses:


There was also some geology going on...

Here's a handful of loose lapilli (mixed in with some organics):


Stream deposits on the flanks of Cotopaxi Volcano, showing different water energy regimes. The coarsest layer in the middle represents the fastest moving water (capable of carrying larger particles of sediment):


And here's some flow-banding in andesite:


It started raining on our way back to the lodge, but that was okay, because hot showers and warm tea awaited there. Acclimatization, check! Next up, the peak known as Ruminahui...

Labels: arthropods, critters, ecuador, geology, mammals, plants, south america, travel, volcano

You know what feels really good when you're feeling sick? A hot bath.

And so, when it came to pass that over the winter break, I flew down to Ecuador with a recovering case of pneumonia, my friend Lily and I opted to put our mountain-climbing plans on hold, and go sit in some hot water instead.



From Quito, we took a public bus ($2) an hour east to a series of thermal pools at Papallacta ("papa yacht uh"). This is a lovely resort, nestled in a lovely valley:



Inside the resort (>$2), the architecture was fused with the landscaping in some interesting pseudo-natural ways. For instance, this is in the lounge, where the rocky wall rises up, but then stops some distance below where the wooden ceiling begins. The interval is filled with glass, but the illusion is that the building is open to nature.



They've got nice grounds, too. An organic garden is featured, and they have some neat sculptures. This one is clearly inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.



But there was a mystery... The local river, which carved the valley, was cold:



...So where did the hot water come from? We had noticed some steaming pools on the bus ride over the Andes, at higher elevation. Taking a walk on our second day there, we saw this aqueduct coming down the mountain into the valley:



Aha! It must be that they are pulling the hot water out of the actual hot springs up above, then piping it down to Papallacta for people to enjoy.

Papallacta is just south of the Equator:



At the Equator, Papallacta's elevation of ~10,000 feet (~3300 m) is quite pleasant. A tad chilly when it's dark or overcast, but the snow was at a higher elevation still:



Hiking around in between soaks in the lovely hot water, we saw hummingbirds galore, including the bizarre sword-billed hummingbird, which has a beak longer than its body (Google it to see!) We also saw some cool critters, like this beetle:



...And also some cool plants. Lily's really into plants, but even I can appreciate their numerous and varied forms, especially in as biodiverse a place as Ecuador...



Flower-on-a-stem, within a leaf:



After soaking and resting and acclimatizing at Papallacta, I felt a lot better and we trooped back to Quito to meet up with our guide and start climbing mountains... More on that in posts to come.

Labels: art, arthropods, birdies, critters, ecuador, hot springs, plants, south america, travel

I'm very pleased to announce that my colleague Ralph Eckerlin, professor of biology at NOVA-Annandale, has been selected as a recipient of the 2009 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. The award is the highest honor for faculty bestowed by the Commonwealth.

From the letter the President of Northern Virginia Community College, Bob Templin, just sent out to all the faculty and staff:

Dr. Eckerlin has served with distinction at NOVA since 1971. He has always given primary attention to effective teaching while also maintaining a strong record of research in his specialization of parasitology and making numerous other contributions to his profession. A previous recipient of college awards as the Student Government Association Most Outstanding Faculty and the Alumni Federation Outstanding Faculty Member, Dr. Eckerlin is praised by students and colleagues as an exceptionally dedicated and inspiring teacher. He takes particular pride in serving as advisor to students seeking admission to professional fields in biology and medicine, and in chairing or serving on committees to bring new faculty to the college who will continue the strong institutional tradition of excellence in the instructional program for biology and other sciences. He has sponsored student trips and conducted research in such locations as Puerto Rico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Mexico, Belize, and Costa Rica. Closer to home, he organizes regular trips to expose students to the wonderfully diverse biota of Virginia, whether in Highland County or the Dismal Swamp.

Beyond NOVA, Dr. Eckerlin has been very active in a number of professional societies, to include serving as president of the Tropical Medical Association of Washington, the Helminthological Society of Washington, and the Virginia Association for Biological Education. He also served as editor of the journal Comparative Parasitology as well as being a member of its editorial board since 1984. His numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals have dealt with a diversity of subjects, including mammals, reptiles, beetles, fleas, lice, nematodes, and protozoans.

Dr. Eckerlin is the seventh NOVA faculty member to receive this prestigious award. This is also the fourth year in a row that a NOVA faculty member has been a recipient. [...and the second year in a row just within the Math, Science, and Engineering division at Annandale -- last year, it was Walerian Majewski in physics!] He and eleven other faculty from Virginia colleges and universities will be recognized at special events in the General Assembly and elsewhere in Richmond on February 19.

Please join me in congratulating our colleague Ralph Eckerlin as one of NOVA's and Virginia's very best!

Bob

Congratulations, Ralph!

Labels: arthropods, mammals, nova

Yesterday, I mentioned that the main point of this weekend's field trip was to attend the Virginia Geological Field Conference in Marion, Virginia.

We arrived on Friday night at Hungry Mother State Park, and got some background information and logistical direction from the trip's leaders and the various officers of the VGFC. We also got some sobering news about how Virginia budget cuts will affect the Division of Geology and Mineral Resources... but more on that tomorrow.

On Saturday morning, we headed out to examine the geology of the Pulaski and Saltville thrust blocks, two of the slices of Paleozoic sediments that got shoved bodily northwestward during the Alleghenian phase of Appalachian mountain-building. The point of the trip was to examine the structure and stratigraphy of these two thrust sheets, in an attempt to compare and contrast them. Both are an example of "thin-skinned" tectonics, where sedimentary strata are deformed (folded/faulted), but they are disconnected from the tougher underlying "basement" rocks (the crystalline rocks of the North American continent beneath). Sliding along a big basal fault called a decollement, these sheets of sedimentary rocks created the northwestern fringe of the Appalachian mountain belt; a zone called the "fold and thrust belt." (This is in contrast to the "thick-skinned" style of deformation exemplified by the Blue Ridge province immediately to the east, in which the basement rock is itself deformed, and shoved up on top of these younger sedimentary strata.)

Here's two of the three field trip leaders: Loren Raymond (holding map) and Bill Whitlock (talking into the microphone), giving us relevant details for our first field stop:


Fred Webb (the third trip leader) used the same technique of large graphics as an aid in explaining the local geology. Here, he explores the geology of Saltville, VA, from a scenic overlook:


Here's Fred and Loren using another visual prop to illuminate the distribution of sediment types (Knox dolomite versus Moshiem limestone) on a farm in the Rich Valley:

Does anyone else out there use large visual aides like these on field trips? I think it's a pretty good idea.

There were a lot of people who attended the conference: over 120! Here's the crowd at the Saltville Overlook stop:


...and the throngs of geologists shutting down traffic on the way to another stop:


...and still more geologists all over the right-of-way at our final stop of the day:

Kudos to the trip organizers for coming up with a coherent way of running the trip with so many participants!

So why were we there? ...To look at these deformed sedimentary strata, and increase our understanding of the deformation mechanisms that accomodated strain during Appalachian mountain-building. Here's a look at the Max Meadows tectonic breccia, a zone of crumbled rock at the base of the Pulaski Fault:


Just above the breccia, the rock is still pretty deformed. Here's some intense folding and boudinage in dolostone & shale layers:


At another location, Honors student Hope W. shows a fault in the Nolichucky limestone:


In other places, folds were the main variety of strain observed in the rocks. Here, we see this in the Honaker dolomite (with elbow for scale):


Ditto for this exposure of the (Cambrian) Nolichucky limestone (enthusiastic caver for scale):


After a superb lunch put on by a church group, we strolled out in some karstic fields in the Rich Valley. Here, several field trip participants drop down into a sinkhole:


I was interested to see that there were a lot of Mississippian-aged evaporite deposits in this corner of Virginia. Saltville's salt was from the Maccrady Formation, as is this gypsum (note fingernail scratch mark):


Here's the spectacular final outcrop of the day, where we looked at deformation within the Cambrian-aged Nolichucky and Honaker Formations, as well as the Mississippian-aged Maccrady Formation they override at this location on the Saltville Thrust Fault:


Of note to you environmental types out there: Saltville was not only the "salt capital of the Conferderacy," but it was also the site of the very first Superfund site (due to dumping of mercury as a byproduct of soda ash + chlorine production).


And I'll just conclude the photo section of the post with a couple of photos of cool spiders we saw. Each of these arachnids is a good three inches in length (including legs):

I think the upper one is a 'garden spider.' The bottom one is silver! I've never seen a silver spider before...


All in all, it was a good day in the field. We returned pleasantly tired and hungry, and had dinner at the Hungry Mother State Park "The Restaurant". Over food, we discussed the pros and cons of field trips like this, and slept well that night.

I was particularly pleased to meet up with and hang out with folks like Cy Galvin (part of my pre-GSW dinner group), Jon Tso (Radford University), Pete Berquist (Thomas Nelson Community College), Amy Gilmer (Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources), and Chuck Bailey (College of William and Mary). Pete, Amy, Chuck, and I are all W&M geology department alumni. Chuck mentioned the good news that he will soon be joining the geoblogosphere too -- watch this site for an announcement of his (surely to be excellent) geology blog as soon as it goes live.

Labels: arthropods, conferences, field trips, nova, stratigraphy, structure, valley and ridge, virginia

If you didn't already catch it elsewhere, there's a new fossil from the Chengjiang Fauna that suggests a bunch of arthropods following one another in a line. Matt at the HMNH reports on it here.

Labels: arthropods, blogs, cambrian, fossils