Hello everyone! Today we got to go see the fossil reef near Cockburn Town. Which, not to be biased, makes it one of the best trips in my book. We started the morning bright and early, ate breakfast at the Gerace Research Center, then piled into our truck and van for the drive to Cockburn Town. This fossil reef is currently right above sea level, but reefs definitely don’t live at sea level. We talked about how this represents differing sea levels during the Pleistocene and how at the period in time which the reef was alive, sea level was much higher than it is now. There were tons of beautiful coral fossils, as well as a lot of bivalve and gastropod shells! Interestingly, when we walked a little further away from the shore line, we saw that these fossil reef rocks were overlain with sandy rocks with shell fragments, then with finer sand with crossbedding. This outcrop was an excellent example of regression of the sea level! We were able to look at a few meters of rock and be able to see the changes in sea level affecting the deposition of sediments.
In addition to this, the rocky exposures were great for tide pooling, so we got to see some interesting living organisms! There were quite a few urchins, hermit crabs, and snails in these pools.
After we finished up our beachside walk of this fossil reef, we headed back to the research center for a well earned lunch, then on to our afternoon activity which you will read about in the next blog post!
Hope everyone is enjoying our posts and staying updated on what we are learning on our trip!
This post was contributed by Megan O.
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