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| Philosophy
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| Geology
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Here I am studying the limestone around Platsburg, New York in 1973. |
Maclurites magnus |
As
a profession I'm an expert on carbonate geology, meaning I study strata
made of limestone or dolomite. If you want to know more about what
I do professionally, go to the my CRC Enterprises company web page,
for which there is a link under related sites to the left.
Large stromatoporoid with infestation of tabulate coral. The two reef dwellers subsequently competed for living space with the tabulate coral loosing when the stromatoporoid overgrew it. |
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| I am a paleontologist by training and a carbonate geologist by profession. What this means is I did my graduate work in paleontology and wrote a masters thesis on the ecology of an Ordovician snail called Maclurites magnus, and a Ph.D. on the physical and biological stresses that controlled the development of Devonian reefs. | |||
Carbonate Texture and Classification According to the AGI glossary of geology, the term texture describes the general physical appearance of a rock. This includes the geometric aspects of and the mutual relations among the physical components of a sediment or rock. Sedimentary carbonate textures are a product of sedimentary as well as diagenetic processes. Therefore, textural descriptions are useful because genetic interpretations may be derived from them. Unfortunately sedimentary carbonates possess an infinite array of textures. Thus communication of their description and interpretation of their genesis is extremely cumbersome without some kind of classification scheme that organizes the broad spectrum of textures into manageable and meaningful classes. Three textural features seem especially useful in classifying those carbonate rocks that retain their depositional texture (1) Presence or absence of carbonate mud, which differentiates muddy carbonate from grainstone; (2) abundance of grains, which allows muddy carbonates to be subdivided into mudstone, wackestone, and ˆpackstone; and (3) presence of signs of binding during deposition, which characterizes boundstone. The distinction between grain-support and mud-support differentiates packstone from wackestone—packstone is full of its particular mixture of grains, wackestone is not. Rocks retaining too little of their depositional texture to be classified are set aside as crystalline carbonates. |
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