Monday, May 12, 2008

Chazy Reef field trip...

This past Saturday, J and I took a day to spend together as sort of an end of semester/only weekend we might have free together vacation. Now that J's semester is over (he got 4 A's and 1 yet-to-be-determined grade!!!) he's gotta find summer work and it's entirely possible that he'll be working weekends. I work weekdays. So it goes. Instead of taking off to some nice hotel or far-away country (which we can't afford, anyway), we took a day trip up to Isle la Motte, home of the world's oldest reef in which corals first appear. It was really quite beautiful there. Not only were there plenty of fossils, but the preserves we visited were filled with birds, turtles, frogs and fish. The first stop we made on the island was at Fisk Quarry Preserve, which contains the middle layers of the reef (the reef is 480-450 million years old). The quarry once was excavated for the black and grey limestone it yielded - limestone that was used in Radio City Music Hall - but has since been made into a preserve managed by the Isle la Motte Preservation Trust. After Fisk Quarry, J and I headed to Goodsell Ridge Preserve which houses the youngest layers of the Chazy Reef. The reef, formed during the Ordovician Period in the Iopetus Ocean, extends as far south as Tennessee. References http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/paleozoic_vermont.html

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awesome photos! I liked your recent post about Lone Rock Point, too. If you put in some more description/background with your own pictures, I think such posts could be huge hits. Keep up the great work!