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, and South Africa in his first post-doc, he now works at the University of Edinburgh.
Anne Jefferson has a love of all things water-related and blends hydrology, geomorphology, geology, and climate change in her work. She has a Ph.D. from Oregon State University and is now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.A message from Erwin Sevens:
As a incidental visitor, wandering through geology related webpages, I stumbled upon the WoGE 184 contest. Intrigued by the beautiful phenomenon shown on the image and loving to browse around the planet with the Google Earth application, I could not resist trying to find out where it was located.
So, with a little bit of luck, I pretty quickly found the location in Bolivia. The "crater" like structure is a synclinal depression formed of Cretaceous sediments interlayered with basaltic deposits. It seems to be the place to see dinosaur tracks and a tourist attraction for hikers.
So, according the rules of the contest, it is now my turn to challenge you. Ann and Chris have kindly agreed to host.
Click for a larger image
The region where I grabbed this picture is one of the many examples how aesthetically beautiful geology can be. It is taken from a eye height of 19.33 km and the top of the image is within 30 degrees of North. And no, it is not on Mars.
So, what do we see and where is it located?
Note from Chris: I think Erwin might be a little bit evil, but we'll have to see. Although I'm tempted to waive the Schott Rule for this one, I think I'll leave it in force for the time being. Therefore you need to wait one hour after the post time [20:45 GMT/15:45 EST) to answer for each Wo(G)E round you've won in the past.
Environment
Comments
Sand dunes in the Namib Naukluft Desert
24°12'S 15°38E
Posted by: Hypocentre | February 17, 2010 5:04 PM
It was the colour that gave it away from me (like what happen for the last winner). The Namib was the first desert I started looking in.
The will be my first Wo(G)E win - I'd pretty much given up and most of my good stuff I've already blown on the new geopathology site - typical.
I'll go and find somewhere else and stick it up on my hypo-theses blog soon.
Posted by: Hypocentre | February 17, 2010 5:26 PM
Wo(G)E #186 is up and running at hypo-theses.
Posted by: Hypocentre | February 17, 2010 7:32 PM
Dear Anne and Chris: Thanks for getting all these new people interested in WoGE.
Posted by: Lab Lemming | February 17, 2010 7:41 PM
Wow. Amazing that they can get that magnification at 20km to show a part of Erwin's left thumb. Just up and right a bit from the centre.
Posted by: Bob O'H | February 18, 2010 4:20 AM
Yes Bob,
That is what happens if you use too much Google Earth.
The globe gets thumbled ;)
Posted by: Erwin Sevens | February 19, 2010 6:37 AM
This looks like something that should be posted at Pathological Geomorphology, if it hasn't been already.
Posted by: Silver Fox | February 21, 2010 1:41 PM