This session will be brief. We will review the “bring list”, schedule, regulations, expectations … and the latest Mojave Desert weather reports!
2013 Mojave Desert Field Trip Group
Geology in the News –
Great “astronomical sleuthing” shows that a newly-discovered dwarf start brushed our Solar System about 70,000 years ago. It seems to have passed through the outer parts of the Oort Cloud. If it “perturbed” some icy bodies to become comets, we’ll see them in about 1.3 million years. There has long been speculation that something similar happened in the Cretaceous to release comets, at least one of which may have struck Earth.
Now we can watch in real time as the oceans slowly acidify. You know the story, which is repeated in the article, about the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide that produces more carbonic acid in rain, freshwater and the oceans. Depressing indeed.
My friend Mary Droser and her colleagues have found some very cool vertebrate trackways in the Early Triassic of Utah. A tantalizing glimpse of life after the Great Dying.