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terbedded with the sedimentary rocks, so that approach was out. Our last
hope was the use of paleomagnetics. But once again we were stymied. The
rocks in Italy that Walter Alvarez and his colleagues had drilled had no
ammonites. To complete the circle, to make possible the correlation, some-
one had to complete paleomagnetic analysis on European rocks with both
microfossils and ammonites and then complete the same type of paleomag-
netic sampling in the Vancouver Island region. Only one suitable place was
known to me in all of Europe: a region I had first visited in 1982 while re-
searching another scientific question, the reason for the mass extinction at
the end of the Cretaceous Period. This place was a seacoast section in Spain
known as Zumaya.
Thus an ambitious plan was born. I decided to head east, to Zumaya, to
core rocks in the classic European regions and then head northward and try
it out on the rocks of the Vancouver Island region, including Sucia Island.
Little did I know that I was approaching a problem already ruled intractable
by workers far more experienced in the way we do magnetic rock analysis. I
had enjoyed beginner's luck with the paleomagnetic time machine. I was
about to learn that this particular time machine was a very delicate appara-
tus indeed.
Calibrating our clocks
We struggled into the Madrid airport in early May of 1984- Having taken an
all-day flight from San Francisco to New York and then having flown all
night from New York to Madrid, my friend Jeff Mount and I, a two-man ex-
pedition, numbly dragged a heavy wooden crate from the international to
the domestic air terminal. The crate held two paleomag drilling units and all
the ancillary and peripheral gear needed to conduct that research. Our goal
on this trip was simple: Rettieve a detailed history of the magnetic reversal
stratigraphy from a classic outcrop at Zumaya, Spain. Here we would be du-
plicating the paleomagnetic records of this tegion made in Italy by Walter
Alvarez and William Lowrie a decade earlier. But our rocks contained some-
thing precious that is wanting in Italy: larger fossils, including ammonites.
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