Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We arrived on the dark shores soaked and frightened, conducted re-
pairs to ensure our return at the end of the day, and then in sodden misery set
out to accomplish at least something, trudging along the gravel path in
wretched, squeaking hoots. We students thought we knew what to do; we
had read articles and taken classes. Yet our knowledge ahout how actually to
wrest any information from these rocks was nil; we were enthusiasts, not ge-
ologists. We wete like the nascent "geologists" of the late eighteenth century
who knew that fossils had to be of scientific importance but had no idea how
to access the information they held. My professor took charge, quoting from
the work of the ghostly forefathers of geology, intoning the odd names that
were becoming increasingly familiar to us: the Englishman William Smith;
the French, Alcide D'Orhigny and Georges Cuvier; the Germans, Albert
Oppel and Friedrich Quenstedt. He spoke of stratal succession and fossil suc-
cession, the law of "superposition of strata," and the time units called stages
and zones. But he always teturned to one mantra: Faithfully sample the fos-
sils ftom "measured sections." Measure the strata. Collect the fossils from
measured sections. He began to guide us through this thick maze of rock.
"Start by measuring the sections," he kept repeating. Our impulse was to col-
lect the fossils immediately, which is what children do. "First, describe in
your notebooks the nature of the rocks while you measure their thickness,
and
then
collect the fossils, always noting their exact location both geo-
graphically and stratigraphically. Unless you know the relative positions of
the fossils, they are useless." My professor had been trained by Europeans. He
knew that fossils could tell time only if their relative positions in the succes-
sion of strata could be determined.
We set out to do this, long measuring tapes in hand, desctibing the
strata as best we could in our yellow field notebooks and recording the posi-
tion of the fossils as we came upon them. Ammonite, field number 12/27/71-3,
identity unknown, from thick limestone layer located 25 meters above the
base of the section, geographic location 200 yards north of mouth of Fossil
Bay." We used compasses to learn the "attitude" of the beds, measuring the
degree of tilt that the strata had undergone; we proudly urinated on the rocks
as we had been bidden, watching these rivulets flow down the line of the
