Keenan's Blogiddy Blog

Me and my buddy Matt went for a trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia this past Saturday (November 26th, 2011) to snoop around the city and try to collect rocks and minerals. Why snoop around a big city for minerals? Halifax lies on top of a granitic pluton, a mass of magma located under the surface which has slowly cooled. The batholith intrusion was exposed over a long period of time, over several million years. The granite that you see on most road cuts leading in and out of the city was part of that feature. With igneous rock comes the chance to find interesting crystals. The area is known for its quartz (smoky), feldspar (K-feldspar), tourmaline, pyrite (fool's gold), and gold among other things. When we arrived in Halifax, we had driven by some road cuts that had yielded several minerals. We parked the car close-by so that we could go take a look before going for a bite to eat. We took some of our gear and headed out to check the outcrops. The granite contained fine to bigg...

.. it will get dull. REAL dull. Its about the time of the year where traveling is put off till March of next year. A few months being stuck home would surely drive me nuts. In the mean time I'm taking the opportunity to continue taking courses in Geology and Palaeontology. In the end its not so bad as every time I step out onto the field, I carry with me a better understanding and appreciation. So in some way I don't mind being stuck in the house this winter, my face in books. Right now I'm studying one of my favorite subjects in Geology/Paleontology: the Cambrian Explosion (Radiation). From the Precambrian till the Permian, that's what attracts me the most. Most people like dinosaurs, I on the other hand am more fascinated with proto-animals and how life got to these weird steps in evolution. Life in the Cambrian If you're a visual person like me, you'll love David Attenborough's First Life. This Documentary brings you along for an adventure like...

As you've read in the previous post, Part 1 described the discovery of the trackways that we had found on September 9th, which was on a Friday. Part 2 is the culmination of our efforts and attempt to extract the chosen trackways on the following Sunday, that also saw us go back the morning after. We had planned on the to do's and hows' for the day, but as I quickly found out, you basically make decisions on the go once you're there. We also made sure to bring all the equipment needed for our field trip, including some plaster to create a cast if we're unable to extract the trackways. We arrived on site very early in the morning. Matt had thought that we would probably be done sometime in the afternoon, but that the nature of field work can throw curve balls. We were greeted by friends of the person that owned the land where the beach access was. We told them the purpose of our visit and gave them basic information on the importance of the finds made on this beach....