{"id":5057,"date":"2011-11-04T22:36:38","date_gmt":"2011-11-05T06:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mlmlblog.wordpress.com\/?p=5057"},"modified":"2011-11-04T22:36:38","modified_gmt":"2011-11-05T06:36:38","slug":"take-a-stroll-on-a-fossil-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/2011\/11\/04\/take-a-stroll-on-a-fossil-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Take a Stroll on a Fossil Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fossil Dune Photo by Michelle Marraffini<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Michelle Marraffini, Invertebrate Zoology<\/p>\n

They say a photo tells a thousand words, well the one I took that day has an amazing story. \u00a0With the wind at our backs and a clear blue sky over head we walked along Manresa State Beach, over a dune towards a very special spot. \u00a0 We came across this piece of ancient beach. \u00a0The bottom layer of the outcrop is the oldest layer that was deposited by winds moving sand from the beach inshore to form a dune. \u00a0This dune fossilized, then sea level rose and the dune became submerged as a wave cut bench, similar to rocky intertidal areas seen along the coastline. \u00a0Waves caused part of this layer to be eroded and the wave cut bench became completely submerged and became the inner continental shelf about 125,000 years ago. \u00a0More sediment including pebbles to fine sand grains, was deposited on top of this bench, but then current\u00a0re-suspended\u00a0the fine sediments leaving only the pebbles behind.<\/p>\n

Sea level dropped (or the shelf was uplifted) and the area became closer to shore called the near shore-offshore transition. \u00a0Here storms deposited coarser sediments and finer sediments were deposited in calmer times creating cross bedding. \u00a0As the water continued to\u00a0recede \u00a0the once beach dune moved into the surf zone creating alternating dark and light bands of sediments. \u00a0This entire story was interpreted by students as they took measurements including unit height, grain size of particles, and the types of sediments\u00a0\u00a0in each layer. \u00a0The best part of Geographical Oceanography is telling the story of our ancient coastline.<\/p>\n

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New students Stephen and Sarah measure layers of a fossil dune<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michelle Marraffini, Invertebrate Zoology They say a photo tells a thousand words, well the one I took that day has an amazing story. \u00a0With the wind at our backs and a clear blue sky over head we walked along Manresa State Beach, over a dune towards a very special spot. \u00a0 We came across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":291,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"MLML Student Life","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/291"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mlml.sjsu.edu\/student-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}