I was the kind of kid who always looked for pretty rocks. Little bits of quartz and mica always caught my attention. And if I found anything pinkish, that was even better. However, I wasn't the most organised rock collector. Just ask my mother about learning the hard way to check my pockets before doing the laundry!
I was also quite the typical kid that was into dinosaurs. I mean, what kid WASN'T into dinosaurs? If I found a new book on prehistory at the library, I would check it out and read it cover to cover. I'd sketch and draw all sorts of prehistoric scenes. By around age 10, I was even drafting my own illustrated dinosaur book!
Fossil collection of my youth.
If you had this book as a kid,
you had an awesome childhood!
As my interests matured, I branched out into other earth sciences, because they all borrow from each other at one point or another. As I started building my own personal library, I added a Golden Field Guide to Geology to accompany my Golden Guide to Fossils, since, if I was ever to hunt for fossils, I would need to know how to read the rock layers.
Well I can assure you that in the 50 years since then, I neither hunted for, nor found any fossils. But strangely enough, I kept reading rock layers. So to pacify my wounded paleontologist's ego, I'd collect mineral samples and fossil specimens from museum shops and nature stores. But none of this made me a geologist.
Until one day, I found this little map that showed something I never knew. While I was well acquainted with the Central Connecticut rift valley (and it's dinosaur trackways), I had no idea that much of the rest of the state used to be under an ocean, the Iapetus, specifically. I had to get answers. And I was going to start by finding them in the rocks.
It was this map that showed me that half of Connecticut was once the Iapetus Ocean..
This sample taken from an outcropping on our property, dates from either the Silurian or Orovician periods.
With little more than my old field guides, a little hammer & garden spade, and a detailed bedrock map, I set out on field trips across Eastern Connecticut. I would pick hiking destinations just to see the rocks and maybe come home with a small sample. Erm, I came home with boxes full. I started finding the schists and the gneisses. I found Silurian outcrops and layers of Devonian metamorphosed sediments. I finally hit my personal Holy Grail when I found some pink rocks from the former microcontinent of Avalonia. Satisfied with my finds, I put this hobby on the back burner for a little bit, with one more stop to get a piece of traprock and pink sandstone because these were personally necessary!
Now... about that ocean that my front yard once was. I've been sifting thru dozens of websites and academic articles. The most easily accessible literature is far too simplistic to explain how we ended up with deformed ocean floor sediments in all of Eastern Connecticut. The answers lie in the published papers that I've been finding. And unfortunately, not all of the answers are in one place. And while there are plenty of reconstructions of the continents from the Paleozoic, there are none that show what Connecticut looked like in any detail. I am making it my job to make a paleogeographic reconstruction of Southern New England area at various points in the life of the Iapetus Ocean. I am also hoping to make my own hand-drawn image of the sea floor. And heck, I may as well document my rock-hounding adventures that drove me to this point.
Please watch this space.
Yes, this is a piece of pinkish bedrock from Avalonia.
It's way older than dinosaurs.
And then there's that time I found sand from the Silurian.
Another story for another time!
