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Written by Webmaster
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Thursday, 21 June 2007 |
| Dr. Mike Dorais has students take a closer look at granodiorites in Yosemite National Park where Geology Club spent a few days in the park studying the Tuolomene Intrusion. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 26 September 2007 )
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Written by Brooks Britt
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Monday, 11 June 2007 |
 In the last decade an array of new dinosaurs have been recovered from the Lower Cretaceous Cedar Mountain Formation in Utah. The formation contains as many as three distinct faunas but due to a lack of recognizable volcanic ash beds (except at the top of the formation) the absolute ages for the lower two faunas remained a mystery. To determine the ages of these faunas we utilized detrital zircon crystals – zircons reworked from volcanic ash beds and incorporated into sandstones and silty mudstones. After crushing the rocks and recovering the zircons, BYU geology students travel to George Gehrels geochronology lab at the University of Arizona where they use a laser and mass spectrometer to obtain uranium-lead ages. The results have exceeded our expectations. The base of the Cedar Mountain and most diverse dinosaur fauna (Utahraptor, Falcarius, Gastonia, and several sauropod genera) dates to 124 Ma and the middle fauna (giant nodosaurs and ankylosaurs and a brachiosaurid sauropod) dates to about 116 Ma. |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 12 June 2007 )
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Written by Britt, Brooks B.
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Thursday, 07 June 2007 |
 On a recent fieldtrip to collect detrital zircon samples for radiometric dating some spectacular sauropod dinosaur footprints were found by Adam McKean. The footprints are impressed into oxidized overbank mudstones and infilled with a fluvial sandstone, both within the 148 Ma Brushy Basin Member of the Morrison Formation. The locality is east of Green River, Utah. Discoverer of the footprints, geology undergraduate Adam McKean (left), along with recent BYU geology Master’s graduate, Brent Greenhalgh, who now works for Questar Gas in Salt Lake City looking at a dinosaur footprint.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 12 September 2007 )
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