Yes, I've been hanging about in Egypt again, looking at rocks for my day job. In the absence of any bad science related stuff, here are some pretty pictures.
El Tor, the town where we stayed, at sunset.
Downtown El Tor.
Fossilised burrows in Miocene syn-rift rocks. There's a lot of this in the study area, which usually means that structures that would help to understand the depositional environment are obscured.
Part of the field area. To the right are rocks of the Precambrian basement. In the foreground, a major normal fault separates those Precambrian rocks from Nubian sandstone, Eocene carbonate units, and Miocene syn-rift calc-arenites.
El Tor, the town where we stayed, at sunset.
Downtown El Tor.
Fossilised burrows in Miocene syn-rift rocks. There's a lot of this in the study area, which usually means that structures that would help to understand the depositional environment are obscured.
Part of the field area. To the right are rocks of the Precambrian basement. In the foreground, a major normal fault separates those Precambrian rocks from Nubian sandstone, Eocene carbonate units, and Miocene syn-rift calc-arenites.
5 comments:
I would very much like to be in Egypt, drinking mint tea, enjoying the sun and the sights - hope you manage to do that when not staring at rocks for day job.
Unfortunately, it was a bit of a miserable trip this time. Partly because I've been away too much this year already, partly because the hotel we used was dreadful, but mainly because it was just too hot to get much in the way of useful work done. There isn't much in the way of sights around El Tor, although there's no doubt that the geology is breathtaking and spectacular.
Hey Paul, What's the basement lithology? Whatever it is looks seriously messed up. Is that a function of its proximity to the normal fault that you mentioned?
Nice to have you back!
Mich
Hi Michelle,
Must admit I didn't a lot of attention to the basement, as we only had three days in this area to cover a fair bit of ground. It's quite variable, but seems to be broadly granitic, cut by at least two sets of mafic dykes. It does seem to be quite sheared and greener in colour close to the fault, so I suspect there's some deformation-related retrogression, but I don't know for sure. It would be useful to get hold of some thin sections.
Sorry to hear about your heat woes. I'm terrible with heat too. You need to study the geology of Iceland, clearly...
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