On this Sunday past, Lily and I went to the National Aquarium, in downtown DC, in the basement of the Department of Commerce. Most people, when they hear "National Aquarium," think of the much bigger, much better facility in Baltimore's inner harbor. But Lily really wanted to see this one, so we went. I remembered from when I visited it as a kid that it was a pretty disappointing exhibit, and I can report from adulthood that... it still is.

Just the same, there were some cool creatures housed there in many tanks, and I hereby present the three best photos I took for your enjoyment:






(that last one is a snakehead fish - invasive in the Potomac River and its tributaries)

Labels: amphibians, dc, fish

Geological Society of Washington: Meeting 1432
Wednesday March 25, 2009

• Andrew Todd, US Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado - Abandoned Mines and Trout: The Interaction of Geochemistry, Metal Bioavailability, and Stream Ecology.
  
• Ian G. Macintyre, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC - The Almost Total Loss of Acropora palmata from Shallow Waters off Barbados, West Indies, Initiated by Catastrophic Destruction of a Major Bank-Barrier Reef off the Southeast Coast.
  
• Thomas J. Casadevall, U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado - Lusi: Long-lived Mud Eruption near Surabaya, Indonesia.

John Wesley Powell Auditorium, Cosmos Club
2170 Florida Ave NW
Washington, D.C.

Refreshments 7:30 pm; Meeting 8:00

Future meetings 2009: April 22 (Bradley Lecture); Sept. 23; Oct. 14; Nov. 4; Dec. 9.

Labels: environmental, fish, gsw, meetings, mining, reefs, volcano

Ladies and gentlemen, spring has arrived in the Washington, DC region. It is sublime. I'm very grateful that it's my spring break this week because even though I still have a ton of work to do, I've had the opportunity to get outside every day and enjoy a bit of the weather.

This weekend, I got up early both days and headed out the the Billy Goat Trail, a rugged hiking trail along the Potomac River's gorge about 12 miles upstream from DC. I departed from the trail itself both days, which was great because it brought me to places I hadn't seen before. I found a lot of cool new structures and rocks! Over the next few days or weeks, I'll be sharing some of those images with you, but for today, I figured I'd show you some 'soft' imagery, just to celebrate the fun of being outside on a hike on a lovely day. ...and wearing short sleeves, no less!

Here's a shot of typical scenery along the Billy Goat Trail. This is looking upstream:



One of my side-trips off the trail... because the water level was pretty low, I was able to get to some islands that are often inaccessible. This is the channel between the Rocky Islands (downstream of Great Falls, upstream of Mather Gorge):



This land is all part of the C&O Canal National Historical Park. Here's a spot where rains from Tropical Storm Hanna breached the wall of the C&O Canal, allowing its water to drain downward into the Potomac. Because the canal's towpath was located there, the Park Service has constructed a temporary path which detours around the breach:



I saw some good birds on my hikes there. Red-tailed hawks, double-crested cormorants, Canada geese, mallards, belted kingfishers, pileated woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers, tufted titmice, chickadees, robins, blue jays, and great blue herons. Also, both local species of vultures: the turkey vulture and the black vulture. This is a black vulture (note the black, not red, head):



Here's some tracks: theropod dinosaurs? ...or great blue heron? You be the judge:



Here's a cool fish skull I found:



Of course, it wasn't all scenery, birds, and fish. There were rocks, too. I took a lot of rock photos, and you'll get to see them all in due course... But for now, let me start you off with the tame stuff. Here's some cobbles I encountered along the hike...

Cobble of the Seneca Sandstone (Triassic arkose) showing a mudchip rip-up clast:



Tilting it a bit, you can see other mudchips too:



Cobble of cement containing Seneca chunks:



Cobbles of quartzite of the Antietam Formation showing Skolithos 'worm' tube trace fossils:



I love these Skolithos tubes. It's hard not to love them, and they're everywhere around here. Like the Seneca cobbles, they come from source areas to the west (Culpeper Basin & Blue Ridge, respectively), and were transported to the Maryland Piedmont by the ancestral Potomac River.



My favorite Skolithos-bearing quartzite cobble:



...And the same cobble, end-on:



More to come, tomorrow...

Labels: birdies, blue ridge, culpeper basin, fish, fossils, maryland, national parks, piedmont, sediment

Brilliant! Especially in light of the new fossil evidence about the origins of whales released earlier this year.

From last week's issue of the New Yorker, which I've got time to read today because it's a snow day here in DC!

Labels: art, evolution, fish, fossils, humor, mammals

Recently, Andrew Alden compiled a list of state minerals and state rocks. A quirky piece in today's Washington Post explores what Maryland is urging its citizens to do with their state fish: eat them. The story also, somewhat randomly, includes a limerick composed by Virginia's former governor and current senator, Mark Warner:

We have a state dog and a fish and a bird.
And of the fossil I'm sure you have heard.
So why not a bat?
What's wrong with that?
The state beverage is no more absurd.

For some reason, I hear this limerick in my head in Carl Kasell's voice...

Labels: birdies, critters, fish, fossils, mammals, maryland, politics, virginia

Take this opportunity to view the contestants and then cast your vote for the Freakiest Fish.

And... While we're talking about fish, check this out.

Labels: contest, fish

This weekend, I walked down to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History to check out their new Sant Ocean Hall (previous mentions on this blog).

The new exhibit hall has been under construction for a long time, and opened to the public the previous weekend. I've got a few photos here to share some of what I saw, but the museum also maintains their own Flickr page, which has additional (and better) photographs.

It's pretty cool. There are suspended specimens of both giant squid and also this coelacanth (with "pup" at upper right):


The exhibit has a lot of cool stuff having to deal with the geological aspects of oceanography, too, like this interactive exhibit about drill cores and how geologists interpret sediment. It would make an ideal visit for Historical Geology students:


The thing that caught my eye at first was a series of skeletons showing the evolution of whales over time, and in particular the shrinkage and eventual absence of their hind limbs and hips. I failed to note the name of the first one (falsely thinking I could look it up online!), but the more distant two specimens are Dorudon and Basilosaurus:


And they've got a nice C. megalodon jaw reconstruction holding lots of authentic teeth:


There are lots of smaller fossils, too. I was really impressed by the substantial portion of the hall which was given over to ancient oceans, as preserved in the sedimentary record. Here's a case showing some stunning fossils, including a MASSIVE asaphid trilobite and the best receptaculid ("sunflower coral") that I've ever seen:


A lot of trilobites are on display, most donated by Bob Hazen, of the Carnegie Institution and George Mason University. Here's a lovely Olenellus from Pennsylvania:


Also, you'll find Dunkleosteus, mosasaurs, and this Placinticeras ammonite with mosasaur bite marks running across it.


Here's a rudist clam, one of a half-dozen diverse and chunky specimens on display:


Lastly, I'll show a photo that's part of their display on the Burgess Shale. They include some imagery from Walcott's journal documenting actual fossil specimens that are displayed right along with it. Pretty cool -- a sort of window onto historical paleontological field work.


I also wanted to mention a really neat display called "Science on a Sphere," where a suspended sphere about six feet across gets imagery projected on it from the inside, accompanying narration that explains phenomena like plate tectonics, El Nino, the thermohaline "conveyor belt," and so forth. This YouTube video (not mine) gives a small taste of the Sphere as it explains surface currents using rubber duckies:



All told, it's a great exhibit, and you should check it out next time you're in DC.

Labels: fish, fossils, museums, oceans, smithsonian