MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL — This is my 14th visit to Israel. I’ll be spending ten days here doing fieldwork in places I’ve come to love: Makhtesh Ramon, Makhtesh Gadol, and the Aravah Valley. I’ve returned to complete some Jurassic studies, explore a bit of the Cretaceous, and collect specimens for future Independent Study projects by Wooster geology majors. I’ve also come to work with an excellent Israeli graduate student, Yael Leshno. I’ll introduce her and her project later in this blog.
The top image is of my first field site of the trip: an exposure of the Ora Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Turonian) at Gerofit Junction at the edge of the Aravah Valley in southern Israel. It is a fun location because you can eat lunch while gazing at mountains and valleys in nearby Jordan. Of course, since it is the junction of routes 40 and 90, it’s a noisy place. The Ora Formation is well exposed north of the road junction.
This outcrop is significantly faulted, so you must pay close attention to the stratigraphy to work your way through it. This is a low-angle normal fault. Note that it does not cut the topmost units. All sorts of tectonic situations are possible here next to the Dead Sea Transform system. Dr. Judge would love these structures! Me, not so much.
Parts of the Ora Formation are very fossiliferous. This is a platy limestone rich in small oysters. Other beds have zillions of tiny gastropods, still others with plant and terrestrial arthropod remains. I came here ot find bryozoans, but found only a single specimen encrusting an oyster.
On the way back to Mitzpe Ramon, I stopped at another exposure of the Ora Formation just south of Makhtesh Ramon. It is a place very familiar to several Wooster students, especially Andrew Retzler and Micah Risacher who did much of their I.S. field research on those steep slopes ahead. We often stopped to look at the Ora exposed in the wadis. The view is a bit hazy because of the typical Saharan dust that moves into the Negev in the spring.
There is a fantastic bivalve-bored carbonate hardground in the Ora Formation at this second locality. It is especially well exposed now, probably because of winter floods washing away the soft sediment covering it.
One amazing bed, about a half-meter thick, is packed with thin-shelled oysters. Every time I visit I look for encrusting bryozoans here, but none have appeared. They’ve got to be there!
It was a good start for these few days of fieldwork. I’m now acclimated, my geological eyes are tuned, and I’m ready for tomorrow’s fieldwork in the Matmor Formation of Makhtesh Gadol — the main event!
