Geosonnet 70

 

Geosonnet 70

Amusement parks of resurrected beasts
Traditionally lie on offshore isles.
But dinosaurs, volcanoes now extinct
Might be preserved in sediment’ry piles.
Eroding mountains shed their clastics west
Until they rest in Eromanga seas.
The sand where Muttaburrasauri rest
Has zircons from unknown localities.
Cretaceous rifting pushed the arc offshore.
This thinning crust by newborn ocean drowned.
The Norfolk Ridge and Lord Howe Rise may store
Jurassic arcs where source rocks may be found.
   The dinosaurs and arcs are gone today
   But just like life, the zircon finds a way.

Geology 49 1391 

 

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Geosonnet 69

An accidental drilling in the deeps
Reveals a sleeper agent- felsic melt
Invisible to seismic, magma sleeps
Until basaltic trigger card is dealt.
Diffraction limits fuzz the chamber’s sides
Viscosity impedes acoustic tests
A covert, dried out dacite simply hides
Above basaltic plumbing, long at rest.
Three hundred years, this hidden magma sleeps
Until it’s poked by hydrothermal drill.
Old pumice, cuttings from the drilled-out deeps
Show magma lurking, poised to blast and kill.
Basaltic dykes wake sleepers from their doze
Do not ignore the hazard this can pose!

 

Geology 49 521

 

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