Happy birthday to Lucy, one of the first humini fossils discovered, and a look at some of the best geology tools and a train ride geological field trip in Durango.
Welcome to our new subscribers from IMAGE 2024! Thank you for signing up for Core Elements and I hope we had a chance to meet at this year's event.
Last week’s edition of Core Elements covered geoscience education (and we sang Happy Birthday to Megalosaurus fossils). This edition will cover a few other aspects of geoscience education, and yes, we will sing another birthday song.
In addition to IMAGE, I also recently attended the 61st annual convention of the American Institute of Professional Geologists (AIPG) in Durango, Colorado. Although the focus was on applied geoscience, I was pleasantly surprised to see so many presentations, exhibitions, and field trips related to geoscience education as well. Even the convention itself was held in a place of higher education—Fort Lewis College in Durango—which has a strong geology program.
Let's jump in.
Rasoul Sorkhabi
Editor, Core Elements
Where Paleoanthropology Meets The Beatles
A reconstruction of "Lucy" at Naturmuseum in Frankfurt, Germany (source: Wikipedia Commons)
In 1974, paleoanthropologist Don Johanson and student Tom Gray unearthed a 40-percent complete skeleton of an early female hominin near Hadar in Ethiopia.
The fossil was nicknamed Lucy, after The Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which was playing at the fossil hunters’ camp. This year marks 50th anniversary of Lucy’s discovery. Happy birthday, Lucy!
Who was Lucy?
Lucy belonged to the Australopithecus afarensis species and was dated at 3.2 million years old.
Lucy was about 3 feet 7 inches tall and weighed about 60 pounds. She walked upright but had an apelike upper body.
More than 400 newer species of A. Afarensis have been discovered. They lived between 3.85 and 2.95 million years ago in East Africa.
Lucy’s child:
In 2000, Ethiopian scientist Zeray Alemseged discovered a partial skeleton of a toddler of Lucy’s species at Dikika, ten kilometers from Hadar.
Nicknamed Selam, the prized skeleton was displayed for many people, including former President Barak Obama.
Lucy’s rivals: In 1974, Lucy was the oldest known hominin and was considered the mother of all Homo species. But science has changed since then.
Twenty years later, Meave Leaky and her team in Kenya found fossils of an even older species, Australopithecus anamensis, that lived between 4.2 and 2.9 million years ago. A. afarensis probably descended from A. anamensis.
Yohannes Haile-Selassie and others discovered bone and tooth pieces of species such as Ardipithecus ramidus (4.4 Ma), Ardipithecus kadabba (5.8 Ma), Orrorin tugenensis (6 Ma), and Sahelanthropus tchadensis (6 to 7 Ma found in Chad) in the mid-90s. It is debated if all of these finds really are hominins.
Where’s Lucy now:
Lucy is stored at the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Abba.
Whether Lucy was the ancestor of the Homo species is debated, but no better alternative exists. In any case, Lucy’s impact on the science of human origins has been huge.
Two of the exhibitors at the AIPG convention particularly caught my eye, as I have rarely seen them in other geology conventions: Estwing hammers and Brunton compasses.
Both of these tools are essential to geological field work and are widely used, at least in North America.
They both have a legacy of more than a century.
They are both “Made in the USA.”
Rock hammer basics:
A typical geologist's hammer, also called a “rock pick” has two heads: a flat square head to hit the rock, and a chisel or pick head. Other types of hammers are heavier, flat head “crack or sledge” hammers.
Geologist's hammers are also sometimes used for scale in photographs.
These hammers are celebrated for their durability, easy-to-use length and weight, and style. They are constructed from a single piece of hardened tool steel.
Brunton compasses:
Brunton.com is located in Riverton, Wyoming, and operated by Lauren and David Heerschap. The company has produced more modern, stylish, and versatile versions of the compass.
Their original compasses are named after their inventor D. W. Brunton, a Canadian mining engineer working in Colorado, who patented the compass in 1894.
Brunton compasses are pocket-sized and precise to measure the strike and dip of sedimentary beds, fault planes, and other geologic features.
Geologic Train Ride
The Durango-Silverston steam train passing through a Precambrian granite terrain. Photo by Rasoul Sorkhabi
As part of the AIPG convention I joined a group field trip tour on the Durango-Silverton steam train. It was a 45-mile, one-way, two-hour train ride.
This historic railway has been in operation between the mining towns of Durango and Silverton since 1882. Today, it operates for tourists only.
The Durango-Silverton train ride exposes fascinating sections of rocks and geologic record of San Juan Mountains, the home of Ute Indians and an important site of Colorado Gold Rush in the 1850s.
The Durango train depot has an interesting museum and gift shop, which offers informative books and maps about the train ride.
Time travel in geology:
At the start of the journey in Durango, late Cretaceous Mancos Shale and Mesaverde Sandstone predominate.
The train then passes through Triassic and Permian age “red sandstone beds.”
At Hermosa, about 10 miles north, Pennsylvanian age limestone rocks outcrop. Large bodies of Proterozoic igneous and metamorphic rocks form the oldest basement rocks.
There are also a couple of hot springs channeled through faults to the surface.
As the train reaches Silverton, Oligocene-age volcanic rocks form the high mountains.
The Animas valley through which the train passes was carved out by glaciers and rivers. River alluvium, glacial deposits and drifts, and landslides occur along the valley.
Go deeper: Watch this short videoclip on YouTube and visit Durango’s official website for more information about the train ride.
Speaking Of Time Travel...
I hope you had a great time at IMAGE 2024 and got a chance to stop by the Back to the Future themed Society Square. Be sure to save the date for IMAGE 2025 — 25-28 August in Houston, Texas and share your photos from the event using #IMAGE24.
Until next time!
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