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About 3 years ago I was walking along the dunes by the river, across from Farewell Bend State park on the Idaho side. I noticed that there was what looked to be an abnormal amount of crystallized and glassy material, conglomerates, basalt and lots of sand. The sand can be explained by the presence of mud volcanos and hydrothermal vents that can be seen in satellite photos. My premature analysis and imagination were wild with fantasy. The samples I was collecting were like nothing I've ever seen. I knew something was up, but there were and are, still more questions to answer. Idaho Falls sits at ~4700ft above sea level. Farewell Bend is ~2300ft. Making the Treasure Valley of Idaho a 340mi basin that becomes a bottleneck at Farewell Bend, which would explain the accumulation and abnormal variety of material. I have always been good to pay attention to the composition of the soil and rock in my environment. Usually the material is pretty consistent, but I've seen nothing like the variety that is here. Traveling upriver deposits of glacial stone are evident in the bends of the river, indicating ice jams that built up on the tips of islands. The stones are always upriver of the islands. About 30mi to the Northwest is a very large cement plant run by the largest cement manufacturer in the nation, Ash Grove. I'm still working on understanding the erosion and possibility of run-off and river flows changing the route in which the Treasure Valley drains. The Idaho State Fossil is the Hagerman Horse, which is from an abnormal collection. "Ultimately five nearly complete skeletons, more than 100 skulls, and forty-eight lower jaws as well as numerous isolated bones were found." (wikipedia) There are a few theories as to how the bones made it there is such large numbers. One theory being that they were swept up in a flash flood, ~3.5mya. My own personal theory is if the horses could have been herded by the Native peoples and eaten. The more I look into it though, I see that it is more likely that this is not an isolated event. The deposits in the Hagerman beds may have been, but the odd numbers of bones vs. complete skeletons points at dismembered animals in my opinion. Just as this flash flood 3.5mya could have wiped out the Hagerman Horse, so too could have the human population that would have been very likely to have populated the Treasure Valley region in much larger numbers than we currently understand. Further passed Farewell Bend the Snake River winds into Hells Canyon. The Hells Canyon is the deepest gorge on the North American Continent. Which, to me, says a couple of things. #1 Must be the oldest, Orrrrr #2 Must have had the most aggressive run off which carved it deeper than the Grand Canyon. These are questions will be investigated further as my collection of maps and topographics grows. I am working on understanding what allowed the formation of valleys and plains through the Treasure/Magic Valley ranges, and the lower elevations from the Blue Mountains north to the Cascade range which also has the not so mountainous regions that, by the tectonics in the area, should not exist like they do. Ancient inland seas are what I am looking at currently. Satellite photographs seem to suggest there was a drainage that went to the south and I believe that there were more salts in the waters in these Idaho waters. Which looks to have drained towards Salt Lake. This easily could have been via aquifer, or by displacement from meteoric impact. There has been some problem with correlation because "~" timelines are a bit loose when it comes to lining up events. For instance, the flood that apparently killed the horses in the Hagerman beds was ~3.5mya. Geologists seem to like this ~3my marker for some reason. Same with this is the 12,000 - 15,000ya mentions, some reports mention that the abrupt end to the last Ice Age was ~12-15,000ya. Which, only really gives me direction to look into whether or not, and how the end of this ice age caused the flooding and debris to completely chew up the fossil record and make it incredible hard to identify locations and patterns in events. The "quaternary" deposits at Farewell Bend do and do not make sense. So, while the standard may be to look at a USGS map of deposits to determine what minerals and fossils might be where, it becomes a problem in Idaho because by the elevation drop and the likely age of the Snake River, literally every single time period "should" be represented in the deposits that have accumulated at Farewell Bend. Though, they might just fit somehow in the corresponding periods of deposits, but will need to be given a new description for how the periods are represented in these constantly modified deposits. Suevite chucks, Still working on getting the equipment to make slices. Recommendations I need to head back to the site to take photos of the large suevite boulders that are very clearly ejecta from an impact. Where the top of the boulder is exposed and shattered from weathering. The boulders have a mix of glass, crystal, concretions and stones showing shock induced spallation. The "eggs" previously hypothesized are likely to be shock induced spallation, still wondering how that may occur in an egg though. If an egg were to be fossilized prior to the shock, what would the effects be? Picture showing glass on concretion from suevite boulder. The glass inclusion shattered when chipping it free from the suevite. Part two of this post will be more photos that show the variety of samples collected. It is taking me quite a while to set all of this up. I plan for this to be a regularly updated post. Please, if anyone has any feedback or wisdom, please by all means, I'm here for correction in this critical analysis. One of my favorite things in learning is to be wrong, because that means my autistic thought process has investigated why it's not right, even if I don't know it yet. Suggestions, regarding missing considerations or needed analysis, please school me. I find it difficult to manage my tangents at times. Cited: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagerman_horse (web, 2018) https://www.britannica.com/place/Hagerman-Fossil-Beds-National-Monument (web, 2018)