SEMINAR: GEOTOPICS Now

[Orash Sharifi <osharifi@rsmas.miami.edu>]

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Welcome to GEOTOPICS Season 2

[cid:part1.03030802.00020606@rsmas.miami.edu]

Monday, January 30, 2012
3:15, SLAB Seminar Room, S/A 103
Refreshments at 3:00 PM
Our upcoming speaker is John Dolson , Director of DSP Geosciences and Associates, LLC.

The title of his talk is
A romp through the Western Desert of Egypt: Petroleum Geology, Ecotourism and the World Heritage Valley of the Whales, a 45 million year old fossil graveyard

Summary
Egypt’s Western Desert is a vast area of multiple basins, at least 12 major tectonic episodes and rich a petroleum province.  Beneath a thin veneer of Eocene-Oligocene cover lie inverted and wrenched Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous rift systems which extend to offshore Palestine, Israel, Cyprus and Syria, where giant new gas discoveries are reshaping the politics and economic future of those countries.  Of particular delight to visitors and geologists, however, are the incredible surface exposures of Tertiary bayhead deltas, incised valley fills, immense petrified forests and a world-class vertebrate paleontological site in the Fayoum and Whale Valley sub-basins.  The Whale Valley site, an area of pristine desert scenery, also has a known 480 extinct Eocene whale skeletons lying within a superbly exposed Eocene estuary and along paleo-beaches and tidal flats.  The unique exposures offer the chance to truly understand the paleo-ecology of these shoreline sequences and the life-cycles of multiple whale types… the last whales to have vestigial feet before becoming completely marine mammals.
Humans have also inhabited these basins since Neanderthal times and along the Nile.  The once rich and widespread lakes now largely gone, but 2000 years ago supported 25% of ancient Rome’s food supply. Ancient Pharonic temples, the oldest road in world and the ruins of several Greco-Roman cities line the ancient and now barren shorelines.
In 2005, after much hard work by multiple organizations, including volunteers from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Whale Valley area became a UNESCO world heritage site.  The greater Fayoum depression is being considered for a second site.
This talk frames the petroleum geology of northern Egypt against the incredible beauty, human, and paleontological features that are increasingly inviting eco-tourism, along with the current threat to their preservation by rapid development of the Fayoum Basin.

We hope to see you all there!

Your GEOTOPICS Coordinators,
Keri Vinas and Arash Sharifi
         [cid:part2.07060608.04040107@rsmas.miami.edu]

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