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Saved: September 15th 2021
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I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Geological Society of America Meeting in Denver (in fact, I was doing an oral and a poster presentation of my research). It had been several years since I attended a Society of Exploration Geophysics Conference in the same city, at about the same time of year (
Denver and the Colorado State Capitol). On that trip, I used a digital SLR for the first time, borrowing one from a colleague when I went out exploring the city with a friend.
This time, I went down a day early so that I could take in a field trip before the meeting began. It was a crisp, beautiful morning, and I watched the sunrise reflected on the mountain peaks west of the city from the Denver Diner, where I had breakfast before heading to the Convention Center to check in for my field trip.
A small convoy of vehicles headed out of the city, and into the mountains. The first stop was above Morrison, CO, with a view of the Dakota Hogback and Red Rocks Amphitheatre. From there, we walked down to the Amphitheatre. Along the way, the rocks changed from Precambrian gneiss to Permian "red rocks."
There is a distinct line that can be seen between the two (it's even marked by a bronze plaque), representing a 1.7 billion year gap in the rock record!
The field trip continued, in the sunshine, through progressively younger and younger rocks, until we ended up on Dinosaur Ridge to see dinosaur fossils, and even cooler, footprints. The first ones we saw were "Brontosaurus Bulges," a somewhat inappropriate name for the underside of sauropod footprints (there's actually no dinosaur called the brontosaurus). We had a fantastic brown-bag lunch at the top of the ridge (part of the Dakota Hogback) before heading down to see the trackways. The chance to see the dinosaur trackways was one of the reasons I wanted to go on this field trip, and it didn't disappoint. An unexpected highlight for me was a giant outcrop of evidence that Dinosaur Ridge was once beach-front property--ripple marks. The fossilized crocodile footprints would have been more exciting if we'd seen them before the dinosaur trackways. I have to admit, I didn't even cross the road to look at that outcrop. Instead, I took advantage of the awesome zoom lens on my camera to have a look at the
claw marks.
The last stop of the day was the "Triceratops Trail," on the edge of a golf course and in the shadow of the Coors brewery, where we saw more tracks, some mysterious fossilized splash marks, and some plant fossils.
It was a long, exhausting, but fun day. As much as I try to protect my skin from the sun, I wasn't complaining about needing to keep applying sunscreen at the end of October. That evening, I attended "Seds and Suds," an icebreaker reception for the Sedimentary Geology Division of the GSA, where they served Fat Tire from the New Belgium Brewing Company--it was the perfect way to cool down after an awesome day of geology site-seeing.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
We love Denver
Enjoyed your blog!