Today, we started mapping an extremely tectonic section of Mesozoic stratigraphic section. Due to the number of reactivated normal faults that now behave as reverse faults (very hard to map and visualize mentally), the area has been dubbed the highway to hell. I was doing quite well all day until I ran into a ridge of the Kootenai formation where I found diagnostic mid-unit salt and pepper sands sitting directly next to black shales, which do not form in the Kootenai formation. Then immediately following the black shales in stratigraphic succession I found the top of the Kootenai, which is characterized by gastropod rich limestones. The interesting thing about that confounding fault interface is that it is typical of thin skinned faulting rather than the initial thick skinned faulting that created all the structures I had mapped previously. After a while, I realized what I related to you previously, which is that this area contains many reactivated faults, whereby recent thin skinned faulting makes use of deep seated, old fault geometries. Ha, that was confusing and probably not worded well.
In other news I stopped at a home made chocolate store in Harrison, MT and ended up holding the caravan up by about 5 minutes. This earned me the nickname "the candyman". I ended up buying a few truffles and some chocolate covered potato chips. The candy was well worth the nickname.
Dinner was pretty tasty tonight. We had shepherds pie, carrots, salad, and cheesecake for dessert.
I got my grade back for the 5 hour field test today. I got a 7.7/10, even though I got the geometry of the fold wrong. The class average was a 7. I realize the average may not represent how well I truly did compared to the rest of the class because of chance for skewing if people did really really poor. So, I asked the prof. today if it would be possible in the future to post the median score as well.
I have to go do some more work on this mapping project now before bed.
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