Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, he is now a post-doc at the University of Johannesburg. 
The first thing to get out of the way is the matter of my blog's title, which has garnered accolades ranging from 'more difficult to pronounce than Pharyngula' to 'awesome geo-nerd term'.
An allochthon is a sequence of rocks which has been superimposed by faulting on top of another sequence which it was originally a large distance away from; for example, a sequence of sediments which were originally deposited in the deep sea, and have then been thrust over shallow marine or continental deposits of a similar age.
Therefore, a 'highly allochthonous' sequence is one that has been transported a large distance from its original position (or, more accurately, relative to the fixed 'autochthon').
Of course, that doesn't explain why I chose the term as to appear at the top of my homepage. The pretentious answer would be that the name 'poetically reflects my aspirations to cover the vast diaspora of disciplines which make up Earth Sciences'. But that would also be a complete lie: the embarrassing, nerdy truth is that it's just a phrase which formed part of the banter when I was a geology undergrad, and I just thought that it sounded cool. Yes, I am that sad. On balance, though, I think the geeky true answer is preferable to the poncy false answer. Probably.
Comments
From looking at your profile, it looks like you have a nice gig dude... I look forward to getting more autonomous through your allochthonous postings.
Posted by: J-Dog | March 1, 2007 1:16 PM
Oh, so it's nothing to do with cutting up the flag of Mali, then?
It's a great name, though. Just don't expect me to go round telling people about your blog in parties: I have a hard enough time pronouncing words like that when I'm sober.
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | March 1, 2007 2:47 PM
I'm trying to figure out what you mean by diaspora. Did those disciplines arrive in the Earth Sciences from other science categories? Now what about poncy?
Posted by: jon | March 1, 2007 3:52 PM
Your new posts no longer get caught by your geoblogosphere tracker...
Posted by: LL | March 2, 2007 1:54 AM
They will shortly, once the aggregator picks up the feed.
My apologies to any offended readers from Mali.
Posted by: Chris Rowan | March 2, 2007 2:07 AM
I love the name by I have a bias being a field geologist who loves fold and thrust belts. Been reading for a while and just found your new address. Congratulations
Posted by: dmonte | March 2, 2007 7:07 PM
I think (course it was a long time ago, in a state far away) that when I was a kid a Death Valley my Dad (Geologist who went National Park Service) mentioned that Zabreskie Point was one of the most visible alochthons in the United States. However, I seem to remember seeing another one along the Bright Angel Trail at Grand Canyon.
Cool site.
Posted by: Billy (A Liberal Disabled Vet) | October 26, 2007 1:16 PM