Backyard Trip
My folks have a nice lake behind their house. It is relaxing to spend a warm evening watching a heron spear fish or geese fight each other. Or watch silt slowly fill the lake bed.
Across the street, a housing developer stripped off a bunch of soil down to the bedrock, but ran out of money before building on the land. This has resulted in some significant erosion and sedimentation in the lake, but this cloud does have a silver lining. I soon noticed a thick bed of shale exposed on the
More recently, I returned to an old favorite, which a few miles further from home. This road cut contains a long sweep of Argentine. It has treated me well on occasion.
A zone in the upper part of the Argentine contains many productid brachiopods. Most conspicuous are Juresania, Echinaria, and Antiquatonia. The sheer number of fossils, in part, causes the limestone to crumble into chunks that litter the base of the outcrop:
Fossils, such as this Echinaria, pr