Cuatrociénegas: Ancient Ecology
The University of Texas at Austin
[Chiseling sounds.] A travertine mine has been carved out of the mountain in Cuatrociénegas, Mexico.
[Chiseling sounds.] A travertine mine has been carved out of the mountain in Cuatrociénegas, Mexico.
Paleobotanist Bruce Albert says, "I think basically what we want to do here is reconstruct the history of the desert formation and this basin..."
"...in terms of its vegetation in deep-time scales. See all these little cavities?..."
"Those are precipitate formations of calcium carbonate, and some of the smaller cavities are formed around organic matter..."
"...including pollen, that’s trapped in this. It’s preserved, because it’s basically entombed.“ “So what do you find out by looking at this pollen?,” says narrator. “Oh, I found out that there was birch growing in this basin..."
"...which is much too dry, of course, to support birch now. And that there was not only the pollen, but..."
"...there were also sponges from these deposits. They were actual subaqueous sponge life forms growing up here, not because..."
"...the whole basin was probably flooded at this level, but because there’s a lot of pooling going on around here - maybe a cascading waterfall."
“This was probably a waterfall at some point - maybe one to two hundred thousand years ago, I guess."
"You’re going to measure all the way up to two hundred centimeters?” "Yeah, that's all been done with my folding rule," says Albert.
"Sampling methods here are determined by these layers here which are river cobbles. So there was a..."
"...major stream flowing through here, so yeah, you can tell quite a lot about the environment..."
"...just by looking at the profile like this, in terms of its geology. Obviously there’s no waterfall cascading here today..."
"...again, another indication of a much wetter environment in the past..."
"It’s a interesting finding, and we’ll see if we get more of the same stuff from these layers..."
"...and we’ll see if the rock hammer is hard enough to do the job. So I’ll go ahead and start chipping away. And that’s my story for the day."
[Chiseling sounds.]
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