Part 2 of our Dominican field work was to check out some fossil reefs inland! These Holocene coral reefs are not much older than the modern ones we were diving on in the first part of the trip... roughly 5000 to 10,000 years old.
But first a quick stop at
Lago Enriquillo... this little embayment of ocean was cut off from the
sea and so is now an evaporitic lake below sea level!
With Crocs!
Again, corals make good building stone!
The Holocene coral reef that we were working on is amazingly well preserved! Large gullies have carved their ways through the fossil reef during spring floods exposing a beautiful cut down from shallow water parts of the reef to deeper water parts of the reef.
Facies boundary between massive corals (below) and staghorn corals (above).
This one cliff had a ton of staghorn corals (Acropora cervicornis)
Look at how big those corals are!
Way at the top are a bunch of calcified worm tubes in the tufas!
It's like they just died yesterday!
It felt like you were scuba diving!
Lithophagid clams boring into a coral
This coral has another colony "piggybacking" on it (likely after the first one died). Lense cap for scale
Look at the delicate spines on the pink bivalves!
Beautiful corals!
"Stack of pancakes" coral
This was definitely the most amazing fossil reef I have ever seen. The preservation is amazing and it is so surreal to just walk through the core of the reef!
Oh, plus we got to swim in a cave :)
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