Life in Reggio Calabria is good! A lot has happened since my last post, which has made it hard to keep up with the blog (a good problem to have). Below are a few photos of recent adventures and field work. Most days start at the local cafe with a cornetto albicocca, a cappuccino for me, and a tea for Charlie. We’re delighted to have our friend Brent visiting from Oregon (I don’t have photos of him yet).
We recently went to the small town of Scilla which is famous in Greek mythology as the home of man-eating monsters. The Ruffo Castle of Scilla, shown below, has a history that goes back to the 5th century BC (see Wikipedia article).
From the highest room in the castle we got an impressive view of a young fault that cuts an uplifted 125,000 year old marine terrace (the upper surface with buildings). Motion on the fault has produced a distinctive “wine glass canyon” morphology produced by erosion in the footwall of the fault.
Below is a view of Messina Strait on our long hike up a steep ridge east of Archi. Not boring.
Hiking up this ridge we found a young uplifted marine deposit with beautiful fossil shells!
The marine fossiliferous sandstone rests on top of impressive Gilbert delta deposits recognized by their distinctive foreset and topset geometries. We saw some beautiful examples of sedimentology in the foreset deposits (not shown here).
Yesterday we took an exciting taxi ride up to a high terrace at about 1,000 m elevation and found a marine limestone deposit with more fossil shells. Below is a shot of Charlie showing fine form as he collects a sample. Below that is a look at the high terrace surface. We want to figure out the age of this terrace, to help understand the rate of fault slip and uplift in the region.
Below is my best shot yet of the Messina Strait. It’s a magical place and the geology is amazing.
My sister Sarah arrives today and the adventure continues!