Through The Sandglass

"Giant sand worms lived in Torbay"

 

What a headline - how could I resist? It's from the UK newspaper, The Telegraph, earlier this year - it's not the paper I read, so I only just came across it on the web. Torbay is on England's southwest coast, a popular holiday resort boasting sun, sand, and surf, but also, reflecting its diverse and important geology, the area has been designated "The English Riviera Geopark." Geologist Kevin Page, of Plymouth University, is deeply involved in the preservation and recognition of the region's geodiversity; it's one of his projects that led to the headline and reports such as "Traces of an unknown lifeform have been found in rocks in a secret location in Torbay" and "Scientists have found evidence of a giant prehistoric sand worm in an English seaside resort" (but the image above is purely my own fabrication).

Torbay is in Devon, the only county in Britain to lend its name to a geological period, and Devon’s geological fame is in part linked to its inspiration for the establishment of the original Devonian System in 1836 by Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Adam Sedgwick, two of Europe’s great geological pioneers. 400 million years ago, Devon lay in balmy tropical latitudes, the legacy being great tracts of limestones containing abundant reefs, corals, trilobites and other key critters of the times. But Torbay gradually drifted into desert latitudes and this, combined with general climatic deterioration, resulted in the environment changing dramatically. Flash floods hurtled down desert wadis, scree blanketed the flanks of newly formed mountains, and seas of dunes invaded the landscape; the rocks, from the Permian period, are almost uniformly red sandstones, gravels and conglomerates, recording the dire and extreme conditions that ultimately presaged one of the planet's greatest extinctions (these rocks form the cliffs in the background of the image above).  But life, often struggling, there was, and these rocks preserve traces of it - often, literally trace fossils, tracks, trails, and burrows, footprints in the sands of time,  rather than the creatures themselves whose remains were battered and decomposed into oblivion. And Dr. Page's discovery, that led to the dramatic reporting, is an example of such trace fossils - giant burrows. Now "giant" may be a slight exaggeration, but they are certainly big, and the worms, if indeed they were responsible, were apparently up to a meter long and fifteen centimeters wide. Dr. Page (shown with burrowed sandstone) reports:

It really is quite extraordinary. Nothing like this has ever been found before. The underground area is peppered with these burrows. There is no supporting evidence to suggest they were made by creatures we know about, so what were are looking at is an entirely new life form. It is very, very strange. They were made at the end of the Paleozoic period before dinosaurs came along when the earth teemed with creatures which are now extinct. We have found the holes but as yet we haven't found the animals which made them. They would have looked like the worms from the film Dune. It is science fiction meeting science fact. We know about giant millipedes at the time but this is something quite different. They are unknown to science and a completely new species. It is life, but not as we know it.

The obvious reference to Frank Herbert's book and the classic science fiction movie (not to mention the cult classic, Tremors) has provided fodder for some of the more lunatic fringes of the internet, with sites devoted to the paranormal and the "unexplained" enjoying fantastic speculation. The science, once the analysis is complete, will be published later this year.

Trace fossils, while providing only a vicarious view of life, are, nevertheless, immensely important; they often the only view we have of certain life forms at certain times and they yield insights into lifestyles and locomotion. The recent issue of Earth magazine carries a short piece illustrating this from the Cambrian (also named by Sedgwick) of Wisconsin, in sandstones from perhaps 500 million years ago. Adolf Seilacher, now in his eighties and perhaps the greatest reader of the runes of trace fossils, and James Hagadorn, report how early visits to the land may have been possible.

 

The trace fossil they describe (above) could be the track of a small 12-legged marine critter that, like a hermit crab, kept its gills moist by coiling itself into a shell, and set out onto the beach. If this is the case, then "hermit-like" behaviour originated 290 million years earlier than had been previously thought.

And then, of course, there are the most popular and evocative trace fossils - below, the longest dinosaur tracks in the world, in Bolivia - strolls in the lake, side-by-side, 70 million years ago.

 

 

[Torbay worms http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/4995386/Giant-sand-worms-lived-in-Torbay-scientists-claim.html; http://www.thisissouthdevon.co.uk/news/280m-year-old-worm-new-species/article-769879-detail/article.html. Bolivia tracks images, Jerry Daykin, Cambridge, Creative Commons Attribution License, http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Dinosaur_tracks_in_Bolivia_1.jpg]

Rivers Run Dry - but why?

This map shows the change in runoff inferred from streamflow records worldwide between 1948 and 2004, with bluish colors indicating more streamflow and reddish colors less. In many heavily populated regions in the tropics and midlatitudes, rivers are discharging reduced amounts into the oceans. In parts of the United States and Europe, however, there is an upward trend in runoff. The white land areas indicate inland-draining basins or regions for which there are insufficient data to determine the runoff trends. (Graphic courtesy Journal of Climate, modified by UCAR.)

I'm trying to catch up somewhat on my backlog of reading, working away at the pile of Earth Magazines, New Scientists, and sundry other strata. Now, I admit that I'm doing this under quite idyllic conditions in France, so the task is not exactly a burden. But it does, inevitably, exercise the mind. The July issue of Earth, contains a brief report titled "Rivers Run Dry" and describes a publication from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, that is an analysis of more than fifty years of streamflow data from the world's major rivers. The map that accompanies the article is reproduced at the head of this post. The press release on the report is titled "Water Levels Dropping in Some Major Rivers as Global Climate Changes" and the piece in Earth begins - "Some of the world's major rivers are losing water - and climate change is to blame." The press release also contains the following statement:

 Many factors can affect river discharge, including dams and the diversion of water for agriculture and industry. The researchers found, however, that the reduced flows in many cases appear to be related to global climate change, which is altering precipitation patterns and increasing the rate of evaporation.

Many factors indeed affect river discharge, and I recalled some material I had collected a while ago when I encountered the astonishing fact that one of the world's great rivers, the Indus, for large periods of the year delivers no water at all to the Indian ocean. The population of the once fertile delta has plunged as a result of migration driven by environmental degradation - fish stocks have plummeted, cultivatable land declined dramatically, salt water invasion spread, and the supply of agriculturally nutritional sediment to the sixth largest delta in the world is now a fraction of what it used to be. In the past, the Indus typically carried more than 400 million tons of sediment, much of it sand from the interior deserts, to its delta, which was growing oceanwards at rates of 4-30 meters per year. Not any more: sediment delivery is at most 30 million tons per year and the delta is shrinking. Why? The primary reason is the frenzy of dam-building on the river and its five major tributaries in both India and Pakistan over the last few decades. And this frenzy shows no signs of calming down, more major projects being under construction and planned. An example is the Tarbela dam, below, built as the largest earth-filled dam in the world in 1976; it's estimated that the reservoir will be filled with sediment and the dam rendered useless by 2060.

 

Now of course this is a major social, political, and environmental issue, and not one that I shall get involved in (a selection of detailed resources are listed below). My point is simply that river discharge of water and sediment is complex and multi-faceted but water availability is a crucial and immediate issue for the majority of the world's population; it's not just the residents of the once-fertile but now rapidly desertifying Indus delta whose lives are ruined by changes to their water supplies. I was also reading recently that the much-heralded early success of restoring Iraq's marshes, the most important wetlands in the Middle East, is threatened by dam-building upstream along the Tigris and the Euphrates. My point is simply that, for an issue as vital and complex as water supply, the statement that "Some of the world's major rivers are losing water - and climate change is to blame" is misleading and dilutes the focus needed on the immediate problems and their possible solutions.

[the NCAR news release is at http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/flow.jsp; initial resources that I have found on the degradation of the Indus Delta and water management issues along the river are at http://internationalrivers.org/node/3601,  http://www.uicnmed.org/web2007/cdflow/conten/3/pdf/3_5_Pakistan_Indus.pdf, http://www.worldsindhi.org/waterenvironmentalcrisis.html, and http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46111;  the situation in the Iraq marshes is described at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7906512.stm]

Writing in sand - sedimentary structures

Just as literature students develop the craft of analyzing the structure of a story, so do geologists analyze the structures of sediments and the stories that they tell. The internal architecture of sand bodies is endlessly varied, fascinatingly complex, and, if we can only figure out what it's trying to tell us, hugely informative. Revealed are sagas of currents, ancient and modern, of rivers and beaches, barrier islands, deltas and sand bars that sculpt the earth's surface today or did so hundreds of millions of years ago.

Several items on sedimentary structures have cropped up recently, and so this is a kind of short miscellany on the theme. Andrew Alden has just launched a gallery of sedimentary structures on About Geology (http://geology.about.com/od/geoprocesses/ig/sedstrucs/). Brian at Clastic Detritus has posted a couple of exquisite photos of plane- and ripple-laminated sandstones. Steve Gough at Riparian Rap recently noted that Google Maps contains some high-resolution aerial photos and point us to examples along the Mississippi ( http://lrrd.blogspot.com/2009/06/high-resolution-aerials-of-mississippi.html). These are truly spectacular, and I have reproduced below an image of the beautiful bedforms in a point bar.

And, for animated excitement, go to Dave Rubin and Carissa Carter's page at the USGS where they have numerous videos of extraordinary computer-modelled sedimentary structures in action - the whole site is worth spending some time on, but I've always been entranced by the animations.

Desert Moon

Clustered around a small television screen in the middle of the night in Cambridge forty years ago. One of the most memorable experiences of my life. I can't add anything to that extraordinary achievement, but I do want to pay my respects. The full moon in the desert is itself a wondrous experience, so many stars still visible. And then there is the landscape illuminated by its light. Sitting there alone, nothing, absolutely nothing, would have surprised me.

The sandfish - "like a man diving into water"

My aspiration for the book and this blog, beyond the hope that they would be read at all, has always been that readers would be surprised. This arose simply because of the extent to which I surprised myself - clearly, I had a good idea of the diversity of journeys and connections, and the fascinating questions, answered and unanswered, that the topic would lead to, but the more I looked, the more surprised I became. And it doesn't stop. I've lost track of all the ideas for posts that have simply gone on to the "to do" pile, shouldered aside by something immediate that comes up. I recently wrote about locomotion in sand, robotics, the intimate relationships small critters have with granular materials, and whether sand is a solid or a fluid or something else entirely. And just a couple of days ago, browsing through the Science Daily online news headlines, there was a report on research that intersects with all of these. 

I've mentioned Scincus scincus, otherwise known as the sand skink, sandfish, or sand swimmer, before. This little desert lizard has a remarkable ability to disappear, and then "swim," beneath the surface of the Saharan sand, rather like its blind Australian relative, the itjaritjari, the local description of whose skill is the subtitle to this post. Now new research at the Georgia Institute of Technology has shed amazing light on how these lizards do it. The sandfish demonstrates distinctly interdisciplinary skills, and it took collaboration between the School of Physics and the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Program to analyse them. Daniel Goldman and his colleagues built a small tank filled with glass beads (the sand) in which the density, the packing, could be controlled by pulses of air from below, a sort of fluidised bed. They then let a sandfish demonstrate its skills and used high-speed X-ray imaging to reveal its activities. It was already clear that the shape of the lizard's body and limbs was well-suited to sand locomotion, and there were some suggestions that the nano-scale character of its smooth scales also contributed to its skills. But does it use its limbs to "swim"? The Georgia Tech study suggests not - that, once below the surface, the sandfish tucks its legs alongside its body and propels itself with a snake-like wave motion, a single-period sinusoidal wave that travels from the head to the tail. The news release on the study discusses the kinematics in more detail, and contains links to several short videos of Scincus scincus in action; these make for compulsive viewing, and I've taken the liberty of using screenshots from them to illustrate this post.

 

It turned out that the density of the sand made little difference for the lizard - it simply changed the frequency of its undulation and maintained speeds of up to six inches a second; its methodology is unique, as Goldman describes:

The large amplitude waves over the entire body are unlike the kinematics of other undulatory swimming organisms that are the same size as the sandfish, like eels, which propagate waves that start with a small amplitude that gets larger toward the tail....The results demonstrate that burrowing and swimming in complex media like sand can have intricacy similar to that of movement in air or water, and that organisms can exploit the solid and fluid-like properties of these media to move effectively within them

The team then developed an empirical model of the drag forces faced by the lizard, and, indeed, any object moving through granular material:

Although viscous hydrodynamics can predict swimming speed in fluids such as water, an equivalent theory for granular drag is not available. To predict sandfish swimming speed, we developed an empirical model by measuring granular drag force on a small cylinder oriented at different angles relative to the displacement direction and summing these forces over the animal movement profile. The agreement between model and experiment implies that the noninertial swimming occurs in a frictional fluid.

And, as always with research of this kind, the implications and potential applications for handling of granular materials go far beyond the skills of a clever lizard:

In addition to having a biological impact, this study’s results also have ecological significance, according to Goldman. Understanding the mechanics of subsurface movement could reveal how the actions of small burrowing organisms like worms, scorpions, snakes and lizards can transform landscapes by their burrowing actions. This research may also help engineers build sandfish-like robots that can travel through complex environments.

“If something nasty was buried in unconsolidated material, such as rubble, debris or sand, and you wanted to find it, you would need a device that could scamper on the surface, but also swim underneath the surface,” Goldman said. “Since our work aims to fundamentally understand how the best animals in nature move in these complex unstructured environments, it could be very valuable information for this type of research.”

And, as always with our attempts to better understand the intricacies of the natural world, it's probably more complex. Research conducted recently in Germany and also reported in Science Daily last year, describes specifically how the sandfish uses its limbs to move "in a way very similar to the crawl stroke in swimming." Ah well, it just makes the little lizard all the more interesting - watch this space!

[The Georgia Tech study is described at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716141140.htm and http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=3161, and the abstract in Science is available at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5938/314 - full version for subscribers.] 

Sand-carrying bearded ladies

Carrying a handful of sand is never easy. But imagine a change of scale - I have a pile of river pebbles and cobbles (garden, ornamentation, for the purpose of) that I need to move, and fortunately, I have a wheelbarrow. But if all I had were my own limbs, carrying an armful of cobbles is nigh-on impossible; now imagine that you're an ant - every cobble is a sand grain and it needs to be moved up and out of the deep subterranean nest that you have been busy excavating. Now of course if the sand is damp, then the grains tend to stick together and carrying a clump of grains is feasible, but, if the sand is dry, then the problem is that of an armful of cobbles, and a conscientious ant is not going to be satisfied with one grain at a time. And the luxuriously-named pogonomyrmex is an ant that's solved the problem.

I am constantly fascinated by the inventiveness and adaptability of creatures, particularly very small ones, in their relationships with sand - endless examples of nature's creativity. Not being in any sense an expert on such things, I just keep encountering more extraordinary examples, of which pogonomyrmex is one. This encounter is thanks to the blog by Alex Wild, a biologist at the University of Illinois with a particular enthusiasm for ants (his website,  http://www.myrmecos.net/index.html, includes two categories listed as "ants" and "not ants"); furthermore, Alex is a superb photographer of his subjects - the images above are from his site and used here with his kind (and instantly granted) permission.

The Greek word pogon means beard, and pogonomyrmex is a genus of generally desert-dwelling harvester ants - bearded ones. The beard is a basket-like structure of stiff hairs below the head that is extremely handy for carrying seeds, eggs - and sand grains; it's called a psammophore, "sand-carrier," and can clearly be seen in the portrait of pogonomyrmex rugosus, below (also courtesy of, and copyright, Alex Wild).

 

It was the psammophore of pogonomyrmex desertorum in action that first struck me - these are the images at the top of this post; the hairs can be seen clutching a load of fine sand grains, and, as the ant cleans herself off after dumping them (right), the whole structure becomes clear. And yes, we know it's a female because males don't dig - it's the females, the bearded ladies (a phrase I have unashamedly borrowed from Alex) who do the work. And, as Alex remarks,

What most intrigues me about psammophores is that lots of completely unrelated groups of desert ants have them. Apparently psammophores evolve at the drop of a hat, although this is perhaps not too surprising. Most ants already have hairs of some sort on the underside of the head.

The excavating efforts of the pogos (as, it seems, these ants are affectionately known) are monumental - these ladies can dig. Research at Florida State University used innovative techniques to reveal the subterranean dimensions and architecture of nests of pogonomyrmex badius, the Florida harvester ant. The sheer size of an excavated pile of sand next to a nest entrance is a fairly good indication of the extent of the underground workings, but their design is difficult to see. Walter R. Tschinkel developed a method of filling a nest with a thin slurry of orthodontal plaster (not to mention molten zinc and aluminum) and then excavating the cast; the sandy Florida soils are sufficiently permeable that air is easily forced out of the small structures of the nest, allowing them to be completely filled with the plaster. The results are incredible, and a full report is available at the BioOne site here. Large nests can be three meters deep, and the architecture is exquisite (photo below).

Shafts descend in a regular helix form, with chambers excavated at varying intervals off them. The number of chambers at shallow levels is much greater than at depth, with different populations of the colony occupying different depths and performing different functions. It would seem that the senior citizens live and work in the relatively less crowded upper levels, with the youths consigned to the depths. The demography and dynamics of the colony are complex, the details - and mysteries - revealed in the article fascinating. As Tschinkel comments,

The nest's architecture represents a considerable investment of energy and time, and provides shelter, microclimate choice, and defendability. In addition to these obvious services, nest architecture is likely also to be a mechanism for integrating the colony members into an efficient functioning whole, the superorganism. The large amounts of time and effort invested in nest construction surely must pay dividends in fitness, for this energy could have been invested in other fitness-enhancing functions instead. An as yet unmet challenge is to identify how particular features of the architecture serve particular colony functions, and how this service contributes to colony fitness.....

The functional significance of the top-heaviness is mysterious. This large space seems under-used, typically harboring very low worker density. Perhaps this area is important for regulating brood development rate during the cooler months, for these chambers are exposed to the greatest diurnal variation in temperature. Alternately, a unit volume of upper chamber is cheaper to excavate than deeper ones because the soil is brought up over smaller vertical distances, but if this space is not heavily used, why create it? If top-heaviness is not functional, but merely a non-adaptive epiphenomenon of some other behavior, it is an expensive one.  

This is but an initial excavation of the extraordinary world of pogos and their relatives - there's more to come.

[All pogo photos courtesy of and © Alex Wild, http://myrmecos.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/the-bearded-ladies/; nest cast photo from The nest architecture of the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius: Walter R. Tschinkel, Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4370]

Summertime: the palette of beaches

Look closely, and even Hawaii's famed black sand beaches, while stark and dramatic, display their own spectrum of hues. But the diversity of origins and composition of beaches around the world leads to a more overtly dazzling palette. I recently came across, via Andrew Alden's  http://geology.about.com/, a post by travel writer Barbara Weibel that captures the spectrum of the world's beaches with some stunning photos. So, go to  http://beaches.uptake.com/blog/rainbow-beaches-colored-sand.html and enjoy.

Thinking like a pile of sand

It sometimes seems to me that managing my thoughts (and memories) resembles trying to control a pile of sand grains as they sift through my fingers. Now, new neuroscience research suggests that the analogy is not far off the mark. As reported recently in the New Scientist, it appears that the way in which our brain's neurons connect to each other and communicate is very much like the way a pile of sand behaves, and it is this that bestows on our brain some of its "remarkable powers."

Ten years ago, a Danish physicist, Per Bak, published How Nature Works: The Science of Self-Organized Criticality, a book that I devoured and still refer to (the paperback cover has an image of sand ripples; it's now, sadly, out of print and used editions seem to be going for either $130 or £130!). Bak used sand pile avalanches as an illustration of the ubiquity of scaling  or power laws in nature: the frequency (or its logarithm) of occurrence of something is proportional to a measure (often size) of that something multiplied by itself a specific number of times (raised to a certain power, mathematically speaking). Newton’s law of gravity is a power law; the pull of gravity on an object decreases with distance to the object squared. Since it decreases, Newton’s law is an inverse power law—and so is that of sand avalanches: the bigger the event, the more rare it is. But what about the “real world”? Scaling laws show up everywhere—in earthquake magnitudes (each successively larger magnitude on the scale is a multiple of the previous), population distributions, city sizes, the brightness of the Sun, and music (the structure of rock music, classical music, and the spoken word all obey scaling laws). Systems displaying this behaviour exist on the boundary between stability and instability, order and chaos, and Bak coined the term self-organized criticality (SOC)to describe this condition. It would now seem that the brain operates in this apparently precarious realm, but generally manages it rather well - and powerfully.

SOC is definitely not characterised by randomness, and, thankfully, neither are our brains (contrary to occasional appearances). If the connections between the neurons in the brain were random and structureless, then the organ would be instantly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of useless but energy-sapping events. Nor are the neuronal connections simple - the new work makes the comparison with "small-world" networks, more flexible and powerful than simple networks, but perfectly manageable compared to randomness.

Such a network of connections allows powerful "avalanches" of neuron communication across relevant regions of the brain, often with synchronised "phase-locking" of large groups of neurons firing at the same frequency; these groups operate effectively but independently of other groups. These episodes of phase-locking alternate with periods of much greater disorder, "blizzards" of activity in which significant reorganisation seems to take place. The durations of these phases and the avalanches of firing neurons at different frequencies all seem to fit with the characteristics of SOC, apparently providing the brain with its amazing capacity to process information and with its adaptability. And also a great new excuse - "sorry, that part of my brain's phase-locked right now."

It's worth noting that power laws and SOC are compelling phenomena, but often easier to hypothesise than conclusively demonstrate. Phillip Ball has an excellent discussion of the phenomena and the problem in his new book Flow, one of his new trilogy on nature's patterns (plus lots of other good stuff about granular materials).

This fascinating topic has also been discussed on the Neuronarrative blog which includes a link to a piece on which I can't possibly comment, Why a Woman's Brain is Like an Avalanche, a Landslide, an Earthquake, or a Hurricane.

Oh, and there's also real "brain sand" - small quantities of grit often found in the pineal gland, composed of various calcium minerals, referred to as corpora arenacea, and believed by some swamis to carry holographic rhythms of the body's spatial and temporal existence.

      

A different "beginning" - and a short, off-piste, rant

Sir Laurence Dudley Stamp (my previous post) must be turning in his grave. It's ironic that, shortly after my modest proposal on the inspirational potential of a book for young scientists, I came across a different kind of inspiration - and this book, sadly, is definitely in print. You would think that a browse of Amazon's list of bestsellers in the category Professional Sciences - Earth Science - Geology might be the place to discover some gems of geo-writing, suitable for inspiring young minds. And, even allowing for the mysteries and opacity of Amazon's ranking system, it is. But, high up there in the company of John McPhee, Steve Gould, Richard Fortey, and Simon Winchester is, incredibly, the book illustrated above, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, now in its eighth glorious edition. Walt Brown, Ph.D (in mechanical engineering) is the father of "hydroplate theory" - a lunatic explanation for everything, the main proposal being that monumental volumes of water erupted out of "the mid-ocean ridge" to form the earth as we know it today. And this happened - you've guessed - 6,000 years ago. Here's a graphic illustration of this event:

 

 New evidence shows that the earth has experienced a devastating, worldwide flood, whose waters violently burst forth from under the earth’s crust. Standard “textbook” explanations for many of earth’s major features are scientifically flawed. We can now explain, using well-understood phenomena, how this cataclysmic event rapidly formed so many features. These and other mysteries, listed below and briefly described in the next 11 pages, are best explained by an earthshaking event, far more catastrophic than almost anyone has imagined......

And here's the introduction to one chapter:

The Origin of Ocean Trenches and the Ring of Fire

SUMMARY: Deep folds, up to thousands of miles long and several miles deep, lie on the floor of the western Pacific Ocean, in an area centered directly opposite the center of the Atlantic Ocean. The plate tectonic theory claims that plates drifting on the earth’s surface dive into the earth and drag down the folds. Fifteen reasons will be given that show why this idea cannot be correct.

Now this is unfortunate, since supporters, wanting to have their cake and eat it , have latched on to recent reports in the scientific literature that de-watering of subducted material leads to large volumes of hydrated mantle to interpret this as evidence of subterranean oceans and thus proving hydroplate theory; they are clearly unaware of what hydrated minerals are - there is, after all, a lot of water in gypsum, but gypsum sure as hell (oops) is not water. 

There are, of course, many well-considered detailed refutations on the web of hydroplate theory - let's face it, it's not tough. I will simply leave this by saying that I have no objection to anyone self-publishing complete rubbish, but this stuff should never be listed under "science" of any kind unless it's a subcategory titled "fantasy." I'll leave you, without comment, with the words of one "editorial review" of this fine book, and I promise to return calmly to my usual theme in the next post.

The single most useful resource I know of on origins, bar none .... If I had to send my child off with only two books, they would be the Bible and In the Beginning. (Dr. Kent Davey, Senior Research Scientist, The Center for Electromechanics, University of Texas).

[p.s., the subtitle of this post derives from my wife's habit of going on a random walk in a supermarket - she describes herself as going "off-piste" and her husband as becoming "piste-off"]

Inspiration - the beginnings of a geologist

 

The question asked for this month's Accretionary Wedge collection resonated immediately with me. A while ago I wrote a short piece for Geoscientist, the magazine of the Geological Society here in London, reflecting on my own beginnings and seeking ideas on ways in which potential young geologists of today might be inspired. And recently I have been thinking about reworking the piece for Through the Sandglass, so this month's blogfest has prompted me into action.

What was the origin of our enthusiasm, what inspired our curiosity – what “turned us on”? These are probably not questions that we often ask ourselves, and it was only in some moments of retrospection during the writing of my book that any real focus came into my mind. I was in some ways lucky - after the usual young male aspirations of fighter pilot and then architect, I settled on geology early on; but then I thought that my luck had run out, for I was informed that to be a geologist required skills in physics, chemistry, and maths - at the time my three worst subjects at school. Then I got lucky again .... but I'm jumping the gun here.

My early interest was aroused through family holidays, particularly in the southwest of England – Cheddar Gorge (our Grand Canyon in a kid's eyes), the beach at Charmouth (now part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage site), recently flood-devastated Lynmouth and the thrill of the venerable but valiant family car attempting the daunting gradient of Porlock Hill (my father all the while declaring that “it’s better to travel hopefully than arrive”). Such adventures offered treasured opportunities for satisfying a child’s love of finding things and (prevailing on indulgent parents) collecting stuff. And boy did I collect stuff - my father always enjoyed recounting how a heavy box, shipped back from holiday, was lugged to our front door by the mailman (or postman) who asked, indignantly, "Wot you got in 'ere, then, rocks?" The affirmative reply was greeted with a look that clearly defined us as demented. And then, perhaps in the hope of imposing some focus and coherence on my collecting activities, I acquired some geology books. British readers will remember the Observers series, pocket-sized answers to everything that could be observed and the one on geology became a treasure. There were others - one titled Pebbles on the Beach, which I thought was fascinating (I appreciate now that it was a sort of introduction to sediment provenance) but seems to have sunk without trace; another was by H.H. Swinnerton, Professor of Geology at the university in the town where I was born and began growing up, Nottingham. Swinnerton's book was Solving Earth's Mysteries, or, Geology for Girls and Boys, and the pictures were fantastic - I still get strange flashbacks flipping through it today.

But there was one book in particular that I now appreciate was the book, the one that was truly inspirational and turned me on to geology, and my copy, “slightly foxed” through my devoted attentions, has now regained its place on my bookshelves. The book was by L. Dudley Stamp (Sir Laurence as he was to become), an economic geographer at the London School of Economics, who strode the fertile lands between geography and geology for much of the twentieth century. Among his many achievements, he commandeered schoolchildren and vicars across the country to compile the first comprehensive land use survey of the country, which allowed crucial agricultural and urban planning during the Second World War that otherwise would not have been possible.

Probably the best-known of Stamp's books is Britain’s Structure and Scenery, but for me the true treasure, the book which I now appreciate fired my fascination with geology, was The Earth’s Crust—A New Approach to Physical Geography and Geology. Published in 1951, it was called “a new approach” because Stamp commissioned huge, detailed models of different landscapes—and what lies beneath them—to be made in exquisite detail by Tom Bayley, a lecturer in sculpture, and photographed in colour for the book.

For me, this was magic. I was captivated by the illustrations, several of which I've reproduced here. I scrutinised the models in detail and even tried, messily, to make some myself. They opened my eyes to how landscapes and their foundations worked, I could look around me on those summer holidays with a different understanding—I could visualise things. And, best of all, some of the models depicted change: for example, the appearance of a glaciated valley when it was still filled with ice and after it had melted (good for Welsh or Scottish holidays!). My curiosity about the world around me was aroused. I was alerted to geology.

The book is, sadly, long out of print and difficult to find, but for me, to open it up today is a deeply evocative and sentimental experience.

After my piece came out in the Geoscientist, the theme was continued by Jon Noad, who began with the following:

Michael Welland recently described how a treasured geological book "fired his fascination" with geology. I too had such a book (The Age of Reptiles by Zallinger), but of even greater significance were those people who fostered my love of geology.

And, of course, he's right - people are potentially more important than any book in firing up young minds. But to find the right people is arguably a matter of good fortune - which is where my getting lucky again comes in. My battle for comprehension, never mind mastery, of maths and the sciences, would have been inevitably lost had it not been for one teacher in high school - he performed miracles. And yes, there were many other people who were key to my evolution into a geologist. But I guess that my point is that every kid deserves that lucky break where the right person shows up in his or her life to inspire them - but until that happens, there are other things that can be done if we learn from our own experiences - and books like The Earth's Crust have an intangible, academically unconventional, something that we might learn from.