MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–This week I’m back in Makhtesh Gadol, that great bowl of Jurassic delights. This is the most extensive exposure of marine Jurassic rocks in southern Israel, and it is highly fossiliferous. This is just a brief report. I’ll summarize the latest finds and ideas later.
Today I spent most my time sitting on these low outcrops at a place we affectionately call “GPS 004 C/W-608”. It is the most productive site for crinoids and their associated sclerobionts (organisms that lived on or in their skeletons, before or after death). There was something about the original distribution of these organisms, and then the preservation and landscape erosion, that makes this site so good. Today I was not disappointed.
Compare this view of the site in July last year with Oscar Mmari, Steph Bosch and Lizzie Reinthal (all Wooster seniors now). The winter and spring rains were a bit higher than normal in this part of the country, so the outcrop today looks positively overgrown! This picture makes me miss having my students along on this trip, but such are research leaves.
