CATANIA, SICILY, ITALY–After lunch our International Bryozoology Association field trip actually collected fossil bryozoans. We visited a quarry exposure of Lower Pleistocene cemented marls rich in the bryozoan Celleporaria palmata (Michelin), along with many other species. These were apparently from a thicket of bryozoan colonies broken up in a storm and deposited as a debris flow down slope. The location is south of Catania at Pianometa.
Lower Pleistocene Celleporaria palmata fragments at Pianometa. This was a very rapid-growing, branching bryozoan colony easily fragmented by storm currents.
Below those bryozoan-loaded beds is this unusual sequence. The darker layered units are volcaniclastic sediments derived from early eruptions from the Mount Etna complex. Occasionally boulders would roll downslope and be deposited as xenoliths (“foreign rocks”) Later the cemented sediments cracked repeatedly due to the intense earthquake activity associated with this tectonic boundary between the European and African plates. Those cracks filled with marly sediment from above.
The last visit of the day was to a sheep cheese farm. One sheep produces about a liter of sheep’s milk. The cheese we sampled (some more than others) is very soft — like cottage cheese without the lumps, or a soft ricotta. Interesting (and unpasteurized). We watched four rams beat each other bloody in an ongoing context monitored by large black dogs. I suppose it is part of the herding process, grim as it is.
