Monday, 10 June, 2024 / Edition 11

Last week, we had a special edition devoted to sands, beaches, and deltas. After I finished that edition, I came across the June 2024 issue of Rock & Gem, which contained several articles about the same topics, but from a totally different perspective: public education and conservation.

While sands are mined excessively, beaches are in retreat, and deltas are subsiding, an effective way to protect these fragile areas is teaching the public about these areas’ geologic significance and treasures. One of the ways it could start is with us geoscientists simply taking a stroll along the sand to share what is out there. Let’s look at a few geo-enthusiasts who have done just that.

Rasoul Sorkhabi

Editor, Core Elements

Early Paleontology on the Jurassic Coast

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First, let’s look at a historic paleontologist who managed to make a big impact in a small town.

Mary Anning (1799–1847): Midway along the Jurassic Coast lies the town of Lyme Regis, where Mary Anning lived. She collected fossils as a child, later taught herself paleontology, and eventually began selling the fossils she found.

Leading British paleontologists would visit Lyme Regis to buy fossils from Anning. Her fossil collection contributed much to the science of paleontology, but she received little credit until 2010, when the Royal Society of London recognized Anning as one of the ten most-influential women scientists in British history.

Where she found fossils: Jurassic Park was a fictional movie, but the Jurassic Coast is an actual place: a 96-mile-long stretch of steep cliffs and narrow beaches in southern England, facing the English Channel.

Jurassic Coast is one of the dozens of fossil beaches in the world, but it is the only one honored as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The following year Lyme Regis, a town of fewer than 4,000 people, launched the annual Lyme Regis Fossil Festival. The 2024 festival was held last weekend. 

Rock formation: The Blue Lias formation is late Triassic to lower Jurassic in age and is comprised of limestone and shale sediments which host fascinating marine Jurassic fossils, notably, ammonites (once sold as “snake stone”) and belemnites (“devil’s finger”).

A message from TGS

This whitepaper features a case study that demonstrates the use of an automated stratigraphic correlation workflow, specifically the ChronoLog pipeline, to develop a geologic model of the Midland Basin.

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Finding Beach Gems During Pandemic Walks

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Historian, writer, and former president of the California Federation of Mineralogical Societies Jim Brace-Thompson lives in Ventura, California.

During the pandemic, he took beach walks with his dog and found fascinating gemstones along a single mile-long stretch. He reports about his discoveries and studies in Rock & Gem as a means of teaching others.

Here are a few lapidary materials he found:

• Jasper (from the old French jasper and Latin iaspidem, meaning “speckled stone”): an impure variety of chalcedony (fine silica aggregate) in shades of red and yellow

• Travertine (from the Italian towns of Tibur or Tivoli, near Rome): a form of terrestrial limestone found along hot mineral springs, and used as building stone

• Opal (probably from Greek opallios and Sanskrit opala, meaning “jewel”): a hydrated amorphous variety of silica that is deposited at low temperatures in rock fractures. It is often associated with the Miocene-age Monterey formation in California.

• Granite pebbles that were obviously transported from the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Anyone can do it: Brace-Thompson adds that everyone can do this in any landscape; only one thing is needed: To keep your eyes peeled.

A message from URTeC

Join AAPG at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) from 17-19 June at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas.

Use the exhibition guest pass below to register for the URTeC exhibition for free, compliments of AAPG's Core Elements newsletter.

Other Coasts Where Rock Hunting Can Help Geologic Education

Andrey Bayda/Shutterstock.com

Here are three more spaces where geoscience and public education easily collide and the science behind the rocks one can find there:

The Oregon Coast. Eric Davis, a coastal rockhounding guide and owner of Oregon Coast Agates, describes his own experience discovering gemstones while river kayaking. His favorite finds are agate, a fine crystalline variety of chalcedony usually found in bands or strips of varying color and formed within volcanic and metamorphic rocks.

• The science behind it: The name agate comes from the Latin name Achates for a river in Sicily. Agates and jaspers look alike, though jasper has more earthy and opaque colors, while agates are translucent, shiny, and glow in U.V. light.

Glass beaches: Robert Beard, a geologist and author of several rockhound books, wrote an article about a visit to Glass Beach in northern California with his daughter. They found many pieces of sea glass.

• The science behind it: Sea glass is made of pieces of glass from broken bottles or even shipwrecks that roll and tumble in the ocean for decades until they are rounded, smoothed, frosted, and then washed to shore. Someone’s trash can become another person’s treasure, it just might take a while.

• Other notable glass beaches in the USA: Davenport Beach (California); North Beach (Port Townsend, Washington); Alki Beach (Seattle, Washington); Grand Park Beach (Milwaukee, Wisconsin); Woodland Beach (Delaware); Spectacle Island (Boston); Tolchester Beach (Maryland)

Black sand beaches. Most black sand beaches are the products of volcanic activity near coastal areas.

• The science behind it: Black sand beaches are made when volcanic rocks, usually basalt, are weathered, eroded, and broken down to small fragments and grains over millions of years. Black sands contain magnetite that is rich in iron (and some other precious metals).

• Notable black sand beaches : Reynisfjara (Iceland), Ghost Point (California); Punalu’s Beach (Kau, Hawaii), Point Venus (Tahiti), Playa Negra (Costa Rica), Riviere Cyrique (Dominica), Anse Couleuvre (Martinique), El Bollullo Beach (Canary Islands), Stromboli (Italy), Vlychada (Greece), and Karekare Beach (New Zealand)

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