MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL — Today I joined four Israeli colleagues to study in detail the top of the Matmor Formation (Callovian, Middle Jurassic) in Makhtesh Gadol, Negev Highlands, southern Israel. The view above is looking south in the Matmor Hills along this upper section. You can see why this kind of exposure is popular with geologists. I love to be able to walk along a single rock unit for kilometers, noting its changes and the distribution of its fossils.
Our party consisted of the two Yaels (Edelman-Furstenberg and Leshno), Rivka Rabinovich from Hebrew University and the National Natural History Collections, and her undergraduate student Or Eliasson. We started along the Goldberg section and worked our way up the formation.
We concentrated on getting Yael Leshno’s PhD dissertation data collection methods established. Here she sits (in the green scarf) with her advisors Rivka Rabinovich on the left and Yael Edelman-Furstenberg on the right. They are gathering data from a quadrat in Subunit 65 of the Matmor.
This particular subunit (a term and designation from Goldberg, 1963) is of particular importance to us because it is exposed in the north of the makhtesh as a spectacularly fossiliferous bedding plane. Here we see the same fossils, but they are fully embedded in the calcareous matrix. Or is the young man above searching for fossils, a task he is very good at.
That was basically our day! The weather was better, with less wind (although still plenty) and far less dust.
