Postcards from the Field

Preparing for a deep field expedition to a remote site in Antarctica is a complicated process, andwe don’t want to leave anything important behind! Our camp at Mount Waesche will be about950 miles from McMurdo Station, as the crow flies, so we need to bring everything with us thatwe will need for our multi-week field season.

A group of geologists from the NMBGMR and Maya Elrick from the UNM Earth Science Department recently met up in the Rio Puerco Valley to examine Cretaceous sedimentary rocks. The outcrops will be a featured stop during next week’s New Mexico Geological Society Fall Field Conference.

Two field geologists from the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources ventured to the
Sacramento Mountains east of the Tularosa Basin to map thrust faults, measure a fracture dataset, and
collect samples for 40 Ar/ 39 Ar geochronology, and discovered evidence that could signify a very young example of Laramide tectonics in New Mexico.