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8 July 2007

The morning's warm-up was an exercise in memory and vocabulary. Next Mark Leckie led a lecture in biostratigraphy, his passion for calcareous microfossils coming through.   Participants looked at data from a sample core from ODP Site 1237 and developed a geologic timeline from the distribution of species found in the core.   

    After lunch we went back to the lab and prepared slides from core smears.  Once again we carefully put out the cores and carefully prepared our slides.   We were able to find samples of volcanic ash, radiolarians, diatoms and foraminifera.  

We then continued with Mark's lecture on magnetostratigraphy, relating the polarity record from the Shatsky Rise (Site 1208) with the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale. Participants related the previous night's lecture by Gary Acton on geomagnetism to their work today.
The last activity was reviewing records from the Drilling Programs.   Although it was interesting to look at the print records, it was more fun to download Google Earth and choose the locations from the map.   It is amazing how much information is now web-based!  I was able to find Site 146, the core from which I took my smear.  There are links to pictures of the cores and all of the data and reports.
In sharing, Mark gave out pieces of columnar basalt from Western Massachusetts, which will relate to the Connecticut geological history that I teach.  

Reported by Louise McMinn

Video report: