Team Jurassic Utah finishes essential data collection

Santa Clara, Utah — A dull but direct title. Every Independent Study advisor knows this critical point in the process: when your students have collected the data necessary to actually do their projects. With discovery-based science like ours on this … Continue reading
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Jurassic hardgrounds and Holocene lava flows in southwestern Utah

Santa Clara, Utah — Team Jurassic Utah spent the day on Galen Schwartzberg’s Independent Study project, the sclerobionts of the Carmel Formation. We began with the above carbonate hardground at the appropriately named Hardground West (HW) locality. (Just a few … Continue reading
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A look back on 2017-18

Congratulations class of 2018!  I’ve attached a few pictures of some of our seniors and professors who gathered for a quick photo on graduation day (pics courtesy of Zane Thornburg).  Special congratulations are in order for Avi Vajpeyi (far left … Continue reading
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On Mercury One Day Lasts Two Years

Mercury has the most noncircular or eccentric orbit of any non-dwarf planet in the solar system. This eccentricity may have trapped Mercury in a 3:2 spin-orbit resonance, where it rotates three times for every two revolutions. When nearest Sol at … Continue reading
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Climate Monday: The xkcd Earth Temperature Timeline

It’s the final week of the semester, so it’s time for a little fun in the world of weather and climate visualizations.  One of the toughest things that Geologists have to deal with is conveying a sense of time scales. … Continue reading
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Climate Monday: “Reanalysis”

There’s two weeks left in the semester, so today on Climate Monday we’re going to take things to the next level and highlight not only visualization, but also analysis of climate data.  Most of the big papers in climatology nowadays … Continue reading
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Wooster Geologist in Southwestern Utah (April 2018)

St. George, Utah — I visited southwestern Utah for a week to prepare for an Independent Study expedition next month to study the Carmel Formation (Middle Jurassic). I wanted to update locality information I had collected in the 1990s (ancient … Continue reading
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New article: Paleoecology of an Upper Ordovician submarine cave-dwelling bryozoan fauna and its exposed equivalents in northern Kentucky, USA

I’m happy to link to an article on Ordovician bryozoans that has just appeared in the Journal of Paleontology: Paleoecology of an Upper Ordovician submarine cave-dwelling bryozoan fauna and its exposed equivalents in northern Kentucky, USA It is work Caroline … Continue reading
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Delightful fossils in the Middle Jurassic Carmel Formation on my last field day

St. George, Utah — Today I met Jerry Harris, Professor of Geology at Dixie State University in St. George. He was very friendly, generous and knowledgeable, guiding me to two fantastic Carmel outcrops I would not have approached on my … Continue reading
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Another day in the shallow Jurassic seas of southwestern Utah

St. George, Utah — Back to the Gunlock region for me to revisit old Carmel Formation research sites to check for access issues and new exposures. This trip has also given me a chance to update my images of the … Continue reading
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