Amazing Fossils In Barbados #1

[franster]

Oh my it’s always fun when a vacation coincides with a darn good fossil hunt! When my man suggested we go to Barbados this year in January I thought cool! When I googled “Barbados fossils” I made much louder exclamations! The entire island is made up of fossils. Barbados, unlike its volcanic neighbors, was accreted onto the side of South America. It pushed up a lot of old coral reefs and mangled a bunch of sediments into a fabulous mess called the Scotland district. The Scotland district in the north of the island is not fossiliferous, just spectacular. Its a case of “Holy unconformity batman!” It’s also fun to stand there and try to figure out what you are looking at in terms of displacement of sediments.

Two things became very obvious fast – it takes a few hours at least to develop the “eye” for the rocks. So at any location I tried to translate my Cretaceous focused vision on these reef Paleocene and Pleistocene corals. Things are so visually different that it’s hard to know what you are looking at. The other thing is that at 27 degrees and 100 % humidity you have a difficult time staying focused. I know you hot land folks will laugh at that but my west coast skin freaked out. But who cares it was truly fantastic.

The island has 3 main layers of coral the lower , middle, and upper. Each had different characteristics and fauna.

Edited January 29, 2013 by franster

[Crinoid Queen]

your pics are not showing up Sounds cool though

[franster]

Thanks for the heads up, better now!

[astron]

Very nice landscape and fossil corals! Thanks for showing them

Apparenly, an in detail presentation might help these fossils to reveal better their beauty!!!