Geosonnet 45

When zircon needs to leave its life behind

Clastic witness protection can be used.

Trace element analysis can’t find

The host whose hospitality’s refused.

Once protolith identity is gone

Stool pigeon phase inclusions spill the beans.

When D value deductions can be drawn

In apatite or sphene, we have the means

To fingerprint magmatic strontium

Deducing silica at the same time

Then using cerium and yttrium

Included zircon’s fingered for its crimes.

  A river cruise while host weathers to dust:

  A sedimentary crime of hate, or lust?

Geology 44 91

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Geosonnet 44

Antarctica’s a frozen realm of ice

Yet troglodytic hydrospheres remain

Radar reflectors, frozen lakes entice

Ice fishermen to see what they contain

Before the ice age, glacial domes were seas

Below sea sediments can still be found.

The lake is mostly glac’ers which unfreeze

Trapped ocean water seeps up from the ground.

The surface sediments are oxidized.

The sulfate in the brine is unreduced.

Lest oxygen at depth leave us surprised

Dissolved O₂ in meltwater’s deduced.

   Alas, no fish were sampled by the drill

   Just microbes that an ice age couldn’t kill

Geology 44 347

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Geosonnet 43

Marsupial invaders from the South

Make North America their newfound home.

Alpacas, llamas, spitting from the mouth

Run off to South America to roam.

The rocks in Panama suggest the land

Connected continents by Miocene.

Pliocene movement, on the other hand

Means radiative retardation’s seen.

A sea of trees, could rainforest impair

Migration of savannah-dwelling beast?

The ice age brought colder and drier air

And grasslands on which ungulates can feast.

   Tectonics may have built the bridge of land.

   Ten million years unused, we understand.

Geology 44 375

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