MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–Today Yoav and I worked on the outskirts of his hometown. This was a field trip that began in his garden and then we wandered into the hills behind his house, eventually circling this little city to return to his house. About half the journey was along the cliff of Makhtesh Ramon, so the top image is a view from north to south. It is geologically inspiring to see this site every day.
After looking at the Avnon Formation for a bit (with its newly-found corals) and the Zafit Formation (with silicified tree trunks), we settled into our special mission to sort out stratigraphic issues of the En Yorqe’am Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Cenomanian). It was a lesson for me in how much a formation can differ in a few kilometers. I would not have recognized it from our explorations earlier this week. The above is a view of a new housing development and an excavation exposing the top part of the En Yorqe’am.
This is a closer view of a mysterious silty dolomitic layer in the En Yorqe’am at the housing development. We’ve seen nothing quite like it in the other exposures of the unit. There is also below this what looks like a recrystallized biosparite showing the bedding associated with submarine dunes.
A key feature of that strange layer is the presence of these calcite-filled cavities. They appear to be formed from original anhydrite nodules, which were produced under hypersaline conditions. This is something we saw in the unit at Hamakhtesh Hagadol.
The solution to the stratigraphic dilemma of the En Yorqe’am is the position of what we call the “grey layer”. This means we have to examine it wherever it is, including on the edge of the makhtesh. “Like a sidewalk, but in the sky.” I wasn’t happy about our hike to that little point of rock, but it really was perfectly safe. And it was worth the effort because we found characteristic features to add to our analysis. It certainly was a fantastic view from there!
