WELCOME

Castle Hayne Quarry

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:10:15 -0400

On this trip, we will visit an active quarry known for marine fossils deposited between 35 and 40 million years ago. During the Eocene, sea levels were much higher than today and much of eastern North Carolina was underwater. Many now extinct species of marine organisms inhabited the area, and fossil shells, bones and teeth accumulated on the ocean floor when these animals died. Over tens of millions of years, sea level receded so that the limestone beds that once formed the seafloor are now miles inland. Erosion, accelerated by commercial mining activity, makes fossils very easy to uncover at this locality.

We will leave campus at ~11 am and prospect the quarry from 1 PM to 4 PM. The trip will occur on a Thursday or Friday (when the quarry is open). Exact date to be announced. Students should bring water, lunch, sunscreen, and appropriate clothing/footwear for light hiking in terrain with steep inclines. No collecting equipment is necessary but containers for fossils are recommended. Students will have the opportunity to collect fossils that they may keep. Common finds include sharks teeth, sea urchins, mollusk and brachiopod shells and coral. More rare discoveries include stingray tooth batteries, seabird bones and whale teeth and bones.

Reed Gold Mine

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 13:57:53 -0400

We will visit the Reed Gold Mine, site of the first documented gold find in the United States. The mine site is now a North Carolina Historic Site. The first nugget found in 1799 by John Reed’s son, Conrad, was a whopper - 17 lbs! Subsequently, larger nuggets were discovered on the property. These finds led to the first gold rush in the U.S. (predating the California and Yukon gold rushes), the discovery of many other gold deposits in North Carolina, and eventually to the establishment of a U.S. mint in Charlotte (1837). North Carolina was the main producer of gold in the U.S. until c. 1850. Although gold mining is no longer a major economic factor in the state, the bedrock geology of the ‘gold region’ has been the focus of research by NCSU faculty and students for the past decade; specifically, our research has focused on the origin of the Appalachian mountain chain.

Highlights of the trip include an underground tour of some of the mine workings, panning for gold near Little Meadow Creek, and discussion of gold deposition and the regional bedrock geology. We will also visit the museum at the site, and take a walking tour around the surface of the mine in order to view the old surface facilities and large samples of different ores from around North Carolina.

The trip will leave campus at 8 AM on Saturday, April 17th, and we plan to visit the gold mine from 10 AM until 2 PM . Students should bring water, lunch, and appropriate clothing/footwear for light hiking in terrain with moderate inclines.

Umstead State Park

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:57:52 -0400

On this field trip we will examine the environmental legacy resulting from pre-Civil War water-powered mill dams on the streams and riparian ecosystems of Umstead State Park in northwest Raleigh. The natural functioning of many rivers and streams in the Carolinas was altered by the construction of dams for water-power. The subsequent infilling of the mill ponds with “legacy” sediment eroded off of adjacent uplands remains an under-appreciated and little-studied environmental problem in our region. This is an area of active research for faculty and graduate students in the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences. Students who participate on this field trip will have the opportunity to create a geologic map of a stream reach, examine archaeological and geologic evidence for mill dams and legacy sediment fields, and propose testable hypotheses about whether or not these long-gone historic grist mills and their dams continue to have lasting environmental impacts that are observable today.
Times will be announced. Students should bring water and appropriate clothing/footwear for light hiking in terrain with steep inclines.