Photos

I took these pictures on my way to San Luis Obispo a couple of weeks ago. A couple of them are of fossils that were on display at a store that I went to. In the picture of the mountains you can see original horizontality and you can see that at some point there was a tilting event. The fossils, I thought were just really cool. I like the the trilobites. One of them looks kind of like a really big spider.

Kern County Geology

Just found this page to be interesting.. thought I would share.

http://natureali.org/guides/KC_geology.htm

Morro Rock

Last week I took a day trip to the coast. I have always been sort of curious about the history of Morro Rock, but since I have been in this class my curiosity has grown.. So I did some research...

At   http://www.travellogs.us/Miscellaneous/Geology/Volcanic%20plugs/Volcanic%20Plugs.htm, I learned that Morro Rock is a volcanic plug. A volcanic plug is magma that cooled inside of the neck of a volcano. The intrusive rock is much harder and tougher than its surrounding rock so over time the rest of the sediment around it eroded away leaving Morro Rock behind. Morro Rock is a rhyolite plug that is from a volcano that was active about 24 million years ago.

According to Wikipedia.com, Morro Rock is part of what is called the Nine Sisters of San Luis Obispo County, which are a series of 9 volcanic plugs that are lined up along the Los Osos Valley.

http://academic.cuesta.edu/physci/Geology/morros.htm, states that "Potassium-argon dating yielded an age of 22.1 +/- 0.9 million years for the crystallization of this rock."

Funny :D

Hallucigenia

 http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/fossil-gallery/view-species.php?id=60

Today our professor mentioned the species called Hallucigenia Sparsa for the second time since the beginning of the semester. This perked my interest so I looked it up. There has been many different thoughts to what genus this animal belongs to. Because of its mysteriousness, it still isn't 100% decided what genus this animal belongs to. It is part of the Animalia kingdom, Onychophora (Lobopodia) Phylum, and Xenusia class. It's name originates from the Latin word hallucinatio meaning "wondering of the mind" and the Latin word sparsus meaning "rare or scattered." The fossil is from the Middle Cambrian period about 505 million years ago. It is a carnivorous animal that fed off of sponges and possibly scavenged decaying animals in the ocean. It was a bottom dweller. It had a worm like body with seven pairs of spines and seven pairs of legs. They were only about 30 mm.

Photo 1 is picture of the fossil and the following photos are what scientist believe the Hallucigenia Sparsa may have looked like.

Ancient Tectonic Plates Close to Home

First of all I found this article interesting because occurs close to home. Secondly, if these theories are further tested and accepted it may change some of what we learn in the class we are in. I think this article is a great example of the scientific method at use which we learned at the beginning of class. This is proof that there is always more to learn when it comes to science. Further testing and research never hurt anyone.

The article is about the Faralon plate, so I did further research to learn more about this plate. The Faralon plate is an ancient oceanic plate that subducted under the North American Plate when Pangea was breaking apart durning the Jurassic Period. Subduction continued on into the Teritary The pieces of the plate that remain are called Juan de Fuca, Explorer, Gorda, Cocos, and Nazca plates. The subduction zone on the northern coast of the US and the Faralon plate is thought to be the cause of the San Andreas Fault. The subduction of the Faralon plate is also believed to have caused the Rocky Mountains because the plate subducted at a shallow angle. The Farallon Islands west of San Fransisco are all that are left of the plate and are predicted to slide completely under America in the next 5 million years or so.

 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/bu-soa031813.php

 http://www.howitworksdaily.com/q-and-a/what-is-the-farallon-plate/

 http://whatonearth.olehnielsen.dk/plates/farallon.asp

 http://www.sjvgeology.org/geology/tectonics.html

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Plate

45 million year old beer? Poor me a pitcher!

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2011/01/18/1447061/poly-professor-brews-beer-with.html

Okay, so the beer isn't actually 45 million years old, but the yeast used to make it is! After ready this post, I immediately thought of Jurassic park. Pulling an organism from AMBER and recreating it in the present day? Seems all too familiar. I thought, how could this be possible? I didn't think we had the technology to do this. The difference between Jurassic park and this situation is the yeast the is being made is a microorganism that is able to lay dormant for years (45 million in this case) without food or air. To reconstruct the DNA from a dinosaur would be almost impossible because DNA is so complicated. I learned of this beer about 2 years ago and I would love to try, but still haven't had the opportunity. I hope to try it sometime in the future. It apparently has a very distinct flavor because the make-up of the yeast is so different then present day yeast.