The Dancing Flowers of Makhtesh Gadol

Mark Wilson March 15, 2012 11:15 am

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–It was difficult to coax them into standing still long enough for their portraits. The wind kept everything moving, so for some of these shots I held the camera in one hand and used the other as a windbreak for the blossoms. It was not easy to do this and not block the weak sunlight gamely penetrating through the dust above. Most of these flowers were in wadis where enough moisture persists to give them a chance for life. The Negev is in a severe drought, so every one of these flowers is a gift.

I do not know their names. Maybe an Israeli friend or two will post them in the comments and I will amend the text? I’m also not using my usual composite photograph technique for these images. Since space is cheap on this blog, why not use the whole frame for such little splendors?

[Please see the comments below by Wooster’s intrepid botanist and plant ecologist, Lyn Loveless. Very helpful!]

This tall yellow flowering plant is found near water holes in wadis. It is not especially common — I’ve only seen three. It might be Broomrape (Cistanche tubulosa), a parasitic plant that taps the roots of other plants.

The plant above has flowers that appear to mature first at the base of the plant, with the youngest at the top.

These flowers (and the little insect) are found on a bush with very thin, almost leafless branches. It looks a bit to me like a pant we call “Mormon Tea” in the Mojave Desert. It may be White Weeping Broom (Retama raetam), which is an invading pest in North America. This is supposedly the bush under which the prophet Elijah sat.

A beautiful little blue flower emerging out of dried mud on the bank of Wadi Hatira. Lyn identifies it as Anagalis arvensis (Scarlet Pimpernel), a cosmopolitan species. I can add that it is probably Forma azurea because of the blue color and Mediterranean location.

A small purple flower common on the windswept higher regions between wadis. Lyn thinks it might be Erodium telavivense.

Another small purple flower common along the wadi banks throughout the makhtesh.

Surely this is a white daisy!

And this must be a yellow one!

Finally, my favorite Negev flower of all. This beauty was rare on our hiking routes. I found only three, all in Wadi Hatira along the edge of a dried-up waterhole. With Lyn’s help identifying this as not an orchid but an iris, we now know it is Gynandriris monophylla. Thanks, Lyn!

What a privilege it is to be a natural scientist and have a chance to experience such wildlife as part of my profession.

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A field day cut short by angry camels and a threat of rain … but at least the dust is gone!

Mark Wilson March 15, 2012 10:08 am

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–Compare the image above to the one taken in the same place two days ago. Much better! Our only dust today was a local product from the unending winds. The Saharan dust is gone. We paid for this clarity, however, with a dramatic drop in temperature. It was 8°C (46°F) when we started work this morning. This is typical for spring fieldwork in the northern Negev. The weather is less predictable, and the temperatures can swing wildly from day to day. The summers are very predictable: sunny, hot, dry, and not a breeze. I don’t take my hat’s chinstrap in the summers, but in the spring it is tied firmly all day.

Our goal today was to travel as far south as we could along the strike of the Matmor Formation, sampling “subunit 51” when we could. Melissa and I walked into the makhtesh about five kilometers. This was not a long distance, but in the summer we just couldn’t carry enough water to pull it off without a four-wheel drive vehicle.

We walked south from the Negev Minerals mine, where we park, along an old pipeline road until we reached Wadi Hatira (shown above). This is the wadi that drains the makhtesh through its single opening in the northeast. It is the greenest zone in the structure because it has the most soil moisture. There were some beautiful flowers along its banks, photos of which I’ll post later. From the wadi we climb up to the old British road and continue south into the Matmor Hills.

Melissa is standing above at the base of Subunit 51 of the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic). This is typical of its exposure in the central part of the makhtesh where there is higher relief in the Matmor Hills. The unit is difficult to follow because of an abundance of small faults cutting perpendicular to strike. Its marly nature means it is often covered with debris from the units above. The northern outcrops have lower relief, which in our case means we have more gentle slopes to search for fossils.

Around noon we ran into a camel herd wandering around our outcrops. (The most active of the beasts is shown above.) They had calves with them and were immediately disturbed by our appearance. They started to make angry camel noises. We did not want a run in with riled-up camels, nor did we want to give their Bedouin herdsmen any reason to think we were harassing them. Since the camels weren’t going anywhere, we reluctantly turned around and headed back.

To aid our decision to retreat, the skies looked very threatening (see above). Rain? Who would have thought? We could smell rain and see what looked like rain to the northeast. We did not want to be in a big rock bowl if it really did pour, so we hastened back to the car. It didn’t actually rain on us, but it may have in the makhtesh after we left.

We got a minimum amount of work done today, though, so it was not a loss. Now we’re back in our warm rooms listening to the wind continue to howl outside.

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Wooster Geologists in the Wilderness of Zin

Mark Wilson March 14, 2012 3:17 pm

MITZPE RAMON–Three times we cross Nahal Zin (or Wadi Zin) on our way to Makhtesh Gadol from Mitzpe Ramon. Nahal Zin is an intermittent stream, meaning it is dry most of the time, but during the rainy season can have a considerable flow, even to the point of flooding. I’ve always seen it bone dry. Nahal Zin is 120 kilometers long with impressive canyons in its upper region and meandering channels in its lower parts. It is the largest wadi that begins in the Negev.
The significance of Nahal Zin is that it is the defining feature of the “Wilderness of Zin” from biblical times. There is still some dispute about its location among biblical enthusiasts, but experts agree that it is essentially the northern portion of the Negev. The passions among the amateurs have much to do with the historicity of the Exodus events. This region was explored by T.E. Lawrence just before he became Lawrence of Arabia.
Google map image of Wadi Zin near Avdat. The red asterisks mark where it crosses Highway 40.

The Wilderness of Zin was on the southern border of Judah and is mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible. Here are three:

“So they went up, and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, to the entrance of Hamath.” (Numbers 13:21)

“The children of Israel, even the whole congregation, came into the wilderness of Zin in the first month: and the people abode in Kadesh; and Miriam died there, and was buried there.” (Numbers 20:1)

“The lot for the tribe of the children of Judah according to their families was to the border of Edom, even to the wilderness of Zin southward, at the uttermost part of the south.” (Joshua 15:1)

(Courtesy of Biblos.com)

During our work in the Negev we do not usually see much of biblical relevance, so living and working in the Wilderness of Zin reminds us of just how deep the human history here runs.

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A silent desert friend on the outcrops

Mark Wilson March 14, 2012 2:09 pm

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–This exquisite snail is not a fossil, although students in the field often mistake it for one. (Melissa did not, I quickly add.) It is a terrestrial, air-breathing pulmonate snail called Sphincterochila boissieri. It is abundant in parts of the Negev and the Sinai Peninsula. Its shell is relatively thick for a land-dwelling mollusk, so it becomes a common constituent of the desert soil in certain habitats.
Sphincterochila boissieri is well adapted to its desert environment. It has a predator-resistant shell with a small aperture to reduce moisture loss. With its white color it reflects significant amounts of solar energy, staying relatively cool. (Compare this to the black ground beetle in the last post. It is most active in the winter and stays in shady areas during the summer.) They are active for only a few days during the winter rainy season, doing all their feeding (on algae, moss and lichens), mating and egg-laying. For the rest of the year they stay dormant, often in the soil or attached to rocks and woody plants. While dormant, they pull all the way back into the second and third whorls of their shell to stay as moist as possible. They can survive droughts, and thus do no feeding, for at least six years.

So, S. boissieri may not be one of our fossil targets, but it is a silent (and completely unmoving) companion during our fieldwork. It has our respect!

References:

Yom-Tov Y. 1971. The biology of two desert snails Trochoidea (Xerocrassa) seetzeni and Sphincterochila boissieri. Israel Journal of Zoology 20: 231-248.

Shachak M., Chapman E.A. and Orr Y. 1976. Some aspects of the ecology of the desert snail Sphincterochila boissieri in relation to water and energy flow. Israel Journal of Medical Science 12: 887-891.

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Negev and Mojave Desert ecological analogues

Mark Wilson March 14, 2012 11:48 am

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–One reason why I like working in the Negev is that it was already familiar when I first visited in 2003. I grew up in the Mojave Desert of southern California, which is very similar to the Negev in many ways. The ecological analogues between the two deserts are astounding, from “jackrabbits” to “sagebrush”. The ground beetle above is a type we see in abundance here in Israel. Anyone from the Mojave Desert would immediately recognize it from the color and behavior as what we called a “stink bug” as kids. They move frenetically over the hot ground with their heads down and abdomens high. Below is an example of a Mojave equivalent: a Desert Spider Beetle (Cysteodemus armatus). It is ordinarily black but is covered with yellow pollen in the spring. We saw this beetle on our departmental Mojave Field Trip a year ago.

When I post images of the Negev wildflowers we’ve seen there will again be familiar to Americans — some almost identical to Mojave equivalents. These analogues show how similar selective pressures can produce very similar effects in unrelated groups.

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Wooster Geologists in Paleontological Heaven

Mark Wilson March 14, 2012 11:24 am

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–The above is an untouched view of an eroding marl of the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic) in Makhtesh Gadol. I simply placed a one shekel coin in the scene for scale. This is why we love this place — the fossils are just rolling out of the outcrops (once you know where to look). Our ultimate goal is to describe the communities in this particular unit, and you can see that we have rich material to work with. You can try to identify the fossils you see here. I’ll give the answers below!

Melissa walking across the northern end of Makhtesh Gadol through the middle part of the Matmor Formation. You can see in the distance that dust (and the wind that brought it) is still an issue.

Ready for the answers to the fossil quiz above? 1 = scleractinian coral; 2 = Apiocrinites (crinoid) calyx base; 3 = Apiocrinites calyx plate; 4 = terebratulid brachiopod; 5 = Apiocrinites stem fragment; 6 = echinoid spine; 7 = oyster; 8 = Apiocrinites calyx plate; 9 = another kind of oyster.

In a close-up yet another type of brachiopod is visible. The red circle shows a thecideide brachiopod (no doubt Moorellina negevensis) attached to a crinoid column.

Cool, eh? And this is just a taste of what we saw today. Heaven indeed.

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Another dusty day of fieldwork in the makhtesh

Mark Wilson March 13, 2012 3:21 pm

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–It was a little warmer today in Makhtesh Gadol, but the sun was still obscured by the dust blown across the southern Mediterranean from the Sahara Desert. I may have an innate tolerance for dust from my childhood in the Mojave Desert, but this particular dust triggers a kind of hay fever for me. Maybe it is because Saharan dust is rumored to have a significant fraction of insect parts!

The top image is from the Mt. Avnon overview of Makhtesh Gadol (looking south along the west wall). The road below was built by the British in the early 1940s in an attempt to find and exploit oil from the makhtesh structure. The road is very well built and has survived with relatively little repair beyond paving it. It is astonishingly narrow, though, especially when you meet large mining trucks and tour buses on it. The trip down the most challenging portion was immortalized in a 2011 movie by filmaker Will Cary. Note the blue skies that summer.

Melissa and I located a series of outcrops in the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic) exposing “subunit 51”, which has a diverse crinoid-brachiopod community preserved in it. This assemblage has a very patchy distribution, so we want to see as many exposures of it we can to make certain we’ve collected a representaive fossil fauna. Ordinarily our outcrops of this marly subunit look like the one above. The yellow-brown color is distinctive, so it is relatively easy to find throughout the area. There is no hope, though, of seeing sedimentary and paleontological structures in such a loose sediment — it simply erodes too quickly.

We found one site, though, where subunit 51 is preserved in a cliff (above), which prevented it from disintegrating in the usual manner. From Melissa’s hat on down is the top portion of this critical marl. We could see no structures in the featureless marl itself, but on the base of the limestone above there are infillings of a trace fossil known as Thalassinoides. These were probably created by burrowing crustaceans (likely shrimp) that dug down into the very top of our subunit 51 mud.

Our favorite fossil find of the day is this little rhynchonellid brachiopod shown below (likely Burmirhynchia) with a round hole in its dorsal valve. It is tempting to say this is a predatory borehole — the work of a carnivore of some kind — but we can’t tell for certain. It is not beveled on its periphery, so we can’t distinguish it from just a hole punched after death through the vicissitudes of burial, preservation or exposure. Still, it is fun to think of it as a fossil predatory interaction.

 

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A dusty but successful start on field work in southern Israel

Mark Wilson March 12, 2012 3:09 pm

MITZPE RAMON, ISRAEL–Melissa Torma, our friend Yoav Avni (Geological Survey of Israel), and I just ended a productive first day in the field. The two of them are shown above in classic paleontological poses. They are collecting fossils from Subunit 51 of the Matmor Formation (Middle Jurassic) in Hamakhtesh Hagadol in the northern Negev. We found excellent crinoid stems and calyx plates, brachiopods, corals, sponges, echinoid spines, serpulid worms, clams, and oysters.The day was very windy but seasonably cool.

You might be wondering why the sky in the above photograph is not the usual bright blue for this region? It is because the air is filled with dust blown off the Sahara Desert to the eastern Mediterranean countries (see NASA image below from 2011). This is a common occurrence here in the spring when a storm system is on its way. In the course of a year, every square kilometer in Israel receives 30-60 tons of this dust. The storm will bring rain to northern Israel tomorrow and Wednesday, but it is very unlikely to break the drought here in the southern dessert.

Shown below is a curious fossil Yoav found at our new site in the Matmor Formation we’ve called (creatively) “halfway”. It is a crinoid stem with a pair of skeletal galls, each with several holes. It appears some organisms infected the living crinoid, which then responded by growing skeletal tissue around the offending critters. Eventually the walled-in organisms drilled their way out, leaving the holes. This is what it looks like, anyway. Feel free to speculate!

I’ve placed a slightly different view of the fossil below to show that these are not encrusters but rather echinoderm skeletal material.

We had a great day despite the pervasive dust and wind gusts. It feels so good to get back to a desert again.

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Wooster Geologists in southern Israel for Spring Break fieldwork

Mark Wilson March 11, 2012 3:52 pm

It’s a low-light, iPad photo, but at least it shows Wooster geology junior Melissa Torma enjoying a fine meal in the Hotel Ramon of Mitzpe Ramon, deep in the Negev of Israel. We arrived here this afternoon after a 22-hour journey from Ohio. The hardest part for me was enduring the 10.5-hour flight and then making a quick transition to driving through heavy Tel Aviv traffic on our southern journey. It all went well, though, and we are safely in our rooms getting ready for our first day of fieldwork tomorrow.

Melissa and I are here to measure sections and collect specimens for her Senior Independent Study project involving the description and paleoecological analysis of a Jurassic brachiopod-crinoid community in the Matmor Formation of Hamakhtesh Hagadol. I’ve collected these crinoids before here, and now Bill Ausich of Ohio State University and I are describing them as a new species of Apiocrinites. Melissa and I want to find more specimens (we hope more complete specimens) of this crinoid and place them in the context of the entire marine community they inhabited. Our partner in this effort is again our friend Yoav Avni of the Geological Survey of Israel.

When we left the USA yesterday there was a series of violent actions between terrorists in Gaza and the Israel Defense Forces. You may hear about rockets from Gaza striking southern Israel, but they are far from us. We see no evidence of the fighting here. We are very safe in the vastness of the Negev Highlands.

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Wooster’s Fossil of the Week: An ichthyosaur vertebra (Middle-Late Jurassic of Wyoming)

Mark Wilson March 11, 2012 1:50 am

It’s only half a bone, but the above is one of my favorite fossils. This is a vertebra of an ichthyosaur, identifiable by its figure-8 cross-section. It is from the Sundance Formation (Middle-Late Jurassic) of Natrona County, Wyoming … and is the first ichthyosaur bone I found. There is not a lot to go on with a single bone fragment like this, but luckily for me only one ichthyosaur has been found in the Sundance: Ophthalmosaurus natans (Marsh, 1879). (“Ophthalmosaurus” is sometimes spelled “Opthalmosaurus” in the literature, and the inconsistency maddens me.)

Finding the ichthyosaur bones on June 23, 2008. Image courtesy of my friend Paul D. Taylor at the Natural History Museum.
Ophthalmosaurus reconstruction (along with some nice ammonites) from Wikipedia. Image Creator: Dmitry Bogdanov.

Ichthyosaurs were magnificent animals that were contemporaries of the dinosaurs. Ichthyosaur means “fish-lizard”, but they were neither fish nor lizards but a unique type of marine reptile. Their streamlined bodies are excellent examples of convergent evolution with the unrelated dolphins and sharks.

Ophthalmosaurus is best known for its very large eyes, up to 10 cm in diameter, with protective bones called sclerotic rings. They probably used these eyes to see in deep, murky waters, or they hunted prey at night.
This view of vertebrae cut in half is from the first paper to describe ichthyosaurs: Home (1814). You can see the distinctive figure-8 shape, known professionally as “cupped vertebrae”. The ichthyosaur specimen Home presented was found by the famous Mary Anning and her brother Joseph. Home thought the animal was some kind of odd fish. Home and the Annings had much more than just these vertebrae, but I like the symmetry of their big discovery and my little one.
Sir Everard Home, 1st Baronet FRS, 1756-1832, was a British physician fascinated by anatomy. Besides the ichthyosaur, he is also known for the earliest anatomical work on the platypus.

References:

Home, E. 1814. Some account of the fossil remains of an animal more nearly allied to fishes than any of the other classes of animals. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 104: 571–577.

Huene, F. von. 1922. Die Ichthyosaurier des Lias und ihre Zusammenhage: Berlin (Gebr. Bonrntraeger), 114pp.

Maisch, M.W. 2010. Phylogeny, systematics, and origin of the Ichthyosauria – the state of the art. Palaeodiversity 3: 151–214.

Marsh, O.C. 1879. A new order of extinct reptiles (Sauranodontia), from the Jurassic Formation of the Rocky Mountains. American Journal of Science, 3rd series, 17: 85-86.

O’Keefe, F.R., Street, H.P., Cavigelli, J.P., Socha, J.J. and O’Keefe, R.D. 2009. A plesiosaur containing an ichthyosaur embryo as stomach contents from the Sundance Formation of the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29: 1306–1310.

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