MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL — The Wooster Israel team worked hard today at the western end of the Makhtesh Ramon geological structure, about 20 km west of Mitzpe Ramon. Yoav Avni of the Geological Survey led us on a very useful traverse of Coniacian through Campanian (Late Cretaceous) rocks in preparation for our measuring and sampling later this week. Again, establishing boundaries first is the key to everything else we will do here. It was a hot day, which is far from unexpected in the Negev Desert.
View east from the western end of Makhtesh Ramon. The dark areas in the left side of the image are exhumed Early Cretaceous lava flows. The triangular feature in the far center is the coagulated neck of a volcano which may have been a source for some of the flows.
Shade is precious here. (Very precious.) Since there are no trees we look for clefts in the rock for some respite from the sun. Other animals, of course, crave the same protection, so we often first sweep out bat and rodent droppings and the like. In one small cave today we met the gecko pictured above. It was so delicately posed we just had to add him to the blog.
Was he selling insurance?
Oh that’s funny!
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