What geology taught me about time

For a geologist the concept of time has a dual character: the time on the human scale, measured in years, months, hours, seconds, and the time on the geologic scale, measured in millions of years.   The beauty of this for me is that I do not completely partition the two scales; instead, because I deal with the time at the geologic scale as part of my profession, I am able to place the human scale in a different perspective.

The planet is about 4.6 billions year old, give or take; the first Homo Sapiens appeared only two (yes, that is 2!) millions year ago.  The recorded human history started only about 10,000 years ago.

If the age of our planet is scaled to the human scale, that would make the Earth ... let's say 80 years old (by using the average life span for people in the developed countries).  That means that the recorded human history started only about 2.5 hours ago, Homo Sapiens is almost 13 days old, and the dinosaurs became extinct only about a year ago (409 days).  (You can build your own geologic time scale metaphors here).

Placing events in a broader perspective is what geology taught me most.  Especially in a time when instant gratification is the norm, I know that focusing on the long term with a constant effort is what has the most impact.

Geology and wine #3

In a previous post, I mentioned that for a country its size, Romania has an amazingly varied geology.  A geologic map, courtesy of the Romanian Geological Institute website shows this complexity.  

And for the third installment of the geology and wine, here it is, side by side, a geological map and a map of the wine regions of Romania, (the later from the Romanian wine website).


I will talk in more detail, in a future post, about the geology of Romania and what the bright colors on the map mean, but for now, it is worth observing the relationship between the two maps.  The Carpathian mountains certainly stand out on the geologic map and they influence the wine regions in many ways.  I already talked about  how geology (and the resulting topography) influences present-day climate, and more specifically how the Foehn-type wind influence the wine making in the Cotnari region.  Geology also has a lot to do with the other elements of terroir, such as soil type and topography.  So when you have the next sip of your favorite wine, try to imagine the tumultuous geologic history that permeates every drop and gives in its "earthy minerality" (yes, that is a common sensory descriptor used in wine tasting).

Mystery trace fossils

During my field research years ago in the Paleogene of the Southern Carpathians (Romania), I found these interesting trace fossils.  They are cylindrical, perpendicular to bedding, and always occur in pairs, suggesting they are U-shaped.  The hosting formation is Eocene in age, consists of silty mudstone deposited in a distal shelf environment and is bounded at the top by a sequence boundary, which occurs immediately above this burrowed interval.

© RomaniaRocks

© RomaniaRocks

My interpretation at the time was that the intensely burrowed interval suggests slow rates of sedimentation, which allowed organisms sufficient time for bioturbation.  Abrupt changes in habitat conditions (e.g. increased sediment content in the water column caused by landward subaerial exposure and erosion) destroyed the animal population.  The abandoned burrows were subsequently filled with sediment (e.g. fine sand and silt) during a time when sediment bypass occurred.

I was never able to clearly identify these trace fossils.  The closest I came to it was "Lanicoidichna", but I do not think this is correct.  A colleague suggested that this may be related to the jackknife clam Tagelus (see pictures here and here).

If you recognize these and can name the type of borrow, please let me know; it would be nice to be able to finally find an answer.

Rural and small town Texas

Yesterday we spent the day on our six-acre property west of Houston, near Brenham.  It was a beautiful January day, sunny and crisp, the type of weather I wish Texas would have more of.

© RomaniaRocks

 We purchased the property a couple of years ago, to be our way to escape the life of the big city.  It is about half-way between Houston and the hill country, at the point where the topography is just escaping the flatness of Houston and starts to roll a little. At the time we bought it, the property was badly overgrazed (previous owner kept miniature horses) and we vowed to bring its beauty back as soon as possible.  After two years, we made good to that promise.  Yesterday we planted a few more bushes and trees, a New Year tradition which we try to keep.

The geology of the area is fairly "uneventful"; our property sits on the Miocene Fleming Formation, which consists primarily of clay, with rare stringers of sandstone.  The predominance of clay makes the soil fairly awful for planting.  These rocks allegedly  contain Cretaceous invertebrate fossils, but we did not find any yet, nor did we make a concerted effort in that direction.
The Bluebonnets are gorgeous here in early spring, I promise to share a post with nice images at peak season this year.

Below are a few other images from the area.

© RomaniaRocks

© RomaniaRocks

© RomaniaRocks

A New Year family tradition

We do not have too many traditions in my family.  We are pretty unconventional and non-traditional (I will spare you the boring details).  We do have one New Year tradition, however, we always watch the New Year's Concert from Vienna.  I started watching the concert in the 80's; as a teenager living in Romania, the event gave me a sense of connection to the free world.  The "Blue Danube Waltz", one of the signature pieces of music performed every year at the concert, offered me the certainty that the world is connected, even when stupid political barriers are imposed on people.  After all, the Danube flows through Vienna and makes its way all the way to Romania, ending its course in the Black Sea.

I brought the tradition with me to the US, my adopted country.  Now, when I am part of the free world, the concert offers me a different sense of connection: the connection to the free-spirited world of my youth and young adulthood, full of idealism, where everything and anything was possible.

This year again, I enjoyed a glass of Champagne listening to the music of the Strauss family and feeling connected the the past, present and the future.

A happy and prosperous New Year to everyone.

Geoscience articles on my current reading list

Quantification of the degree of confinement of a turbidite-filled basin: A statistical approach based on bed thickness distribution - Felletti et al -- method attempting to predict the degree of confinement of a deep-water system by using bed-thickness distribution; study area is in the Tertiary Piedmont Basin of Italy.

Facies controls on the distribution of diagenesis and compaction in fluvial-deltaic deposits - Hammer et al --  facies controls on diagenesis and compaction trends in the Triassic-Jurassic Are Formation of mid-Norway.

Lacustrine turbidite channels and fans in the Mesozoic Songliao Basin, China - Feng Zhi-qiang et al. -- documentation of delta-fed lacustrine turbidites, including dimensional data.

Fascinated by uncertainty

I have always been fascinated by uncertainty.  Maybe because is part of my background, or maybe, as Dennis Lindley says (quote below), because uncertainty is everywhere.

You are uncertain, to varying degrees, about everything in the future; much of the past is hidden from you; and there is a lot of the present about which you do not have full information. Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.

I also suspect that uncertainty is to some degree responsible for my passion for the Earth Sciences, where lack of certainty is the norm. When you are not sure of the outcome, there is always the thrill of possibility, the excitement of anticipation, the prospect for the unconquered horizon.