Wildlife in the Field

This little guy (can you spot him?!) is a Dassie, or “Rock Hyrax” – a familiar friend to many geologists in the field. These animals live in groups among large fallen blocks of rock, and will pop their heads up periodically to keep an eye on you as you go about your fieldwork. They can  cause problems as they have designated ‘toilet rocks’, and their urine can cover a ...[Read More]

This unusual looking caterpillar is working his way across the Houjiashan Formation on the North China Craton. These rocks formed in the lower Cambrian, and are crossed with burrows formed by some of the earliest motile animals. (c) Geology for Global Development 2013  

These wild ostriches (two female on the left hand side, one male on the right) are lined up alongside the boundary between the Congo and the Kalahari cratons in southern Namibia. The craton boundary is marked by a visible fault scarp. (c) Geology for Global Development 2013

A giant millipede kindly provides a scale for a photo of some stromatolites in the Nama group, Namibia. Microbial communities grow upwards towards the light. Each growth phases is cemented by carbonate grains that stick to the sticky EPS substance that the communities produce, forming layered stromatolite columns. The stromatolites pictured above formed 550 million years ago – just as some o ...[Read More]

Each morning when we arrived in the field, hoards of sheep* would come marching over sandstone ridges from miles around to congregate in front of our car. After spending a while thinking we may have established a new animal religion, we realised the poor animals mistook us for their farmer coming to feed them. *We acknowledge that sheep aren’t actually ‘wildlife’! (c) Geology for ...[Read More]

A pair of tortoises retreat into their shells in fear as a couple of geologists appear to study the diamictite they are walking over. Clasts visible in the rock below mark melting events at the end of the Gondwana glaciation, 300 million years ago. Deposits like these cover much of southern Gondwana, and can be found today in southern Africa, Antarctica, Australia, India and South America. This se ...[Read More]