This week for #TakeoverThursday we have @elowenamos, a geology Honours student from @SciMelb @UnimelbESPG!
Elowen is going to tell us what a geology field trip entails and some of the work that comes from fieldwork samples! 🧗
Perfect timing for @earthsciweek 🌏
In a brief break between Victorian lockdowns in May, I was fortunate to be able to do fieldwork for my Honours project 🛣️🚗
As part of this field trip, I traveled to the beautiful lands of the Adnyamathanha, an area you may know as the Flinders Ranges and surrounds 🌄
My motivation to undertake fieldwork was to collect samples of rocks from the early #Cambrian period, over 500 million years ago!
These rocks contain all sorts of treasures, including fossils of the very wacky-looking Archaeocyatha, like in this awesome @melbournemuseum model
For me, a day in the field starts with discussion and planning the night before around the fire! 🔥
This is when we decide where we are going to try and get the next day and what the goal will be 🌟
Good planning and a bit of luck results in great outcrops like these!
These rocks have preserved not only fossils organisms from the past, but clues about the environment that they were living in – this is what I’m really interested in 🧩🔍🧭
Back in the lab (👩🔬), we look at very thin slices of the collected rock to reveal details about the textures and minerals that are in them!
We also zap crystals within rocks with a laser to determine the proportion of different elements, to help to uncover the rocks secrets 🤫
I love geology because of the power it gives us to understand the history of the Earth!
Geology gives us the tools to translate the message and read the history of the landscapes around us, without it rocks are like a language we can’t translate. What could be cooler than that!
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