Marrakech

Today we drove back from Dades Valley to Marrakech!

Here are some shots of the trip!

The Dades Valley is Stunning! 

AWESOME!!!

My student, Nick, and I

Switchbacks!

The boys on the top of the mountain!

The Tiska Pass!

My favorite valley view!

Prepping samples for transport!

Stéphane proving he is a Longhorn!

Marrakech Market

Raph holding a snake

Lithiotids

One of the other sites that was very fun to work on was a lithiotid-coral bank!

Here is the outcrop... look for what look like dinner plates stacked together!

So many lithiotid bivalves!

Easy to walk upsection!

More lithiotids...

...and some corals

 This coral head has been transported! It is upside-down

This was our lunch spot, awesome view eh?

Toarcian coral reefs

Today we saddled up the "sheep hauler" to look at some Toarcian coral reefs!






This was one of my favorite sites! We say some amazing coral reefs, that built up right after a major biotic crisis, the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event!

Loads of phaceloid corals!!!

I love me some coral reefs!

corals and microbes!

Patch reefs!

Thrombolites!

Phaceloid corals!

Classic thrombolites!

The reefs were pretty awesome and being lugged around like sheep was fun too.... All in all, everyone had a pretty great day, look how happy we all are!

Pliensbachian coral reefs

The Dades Valley is a fantastic place to do geology! Stephane even gave his lecture "Texas style"!

Here there the a nice hike up to some Upper Pliensbachian coral reefs

To give you an idea what our target was, here's the outcrop...



That cliff has one huge reef in it, can you see it?

Oh and some herps!

Large Phaceloid coral colonies!

corals everywhere!

there is also some very nice microbialite!

Science stopped for Nomads!

Stromatoporoids are here too!

And a very pretty little echinoid!

View from the top!

So much work to do! Very exciting!