Tag: ophiolite
-
Rock Music Oman 2020 – The Crescent of Learning
I’m homeward bound after the 2020 edition of our Natural History & Contemporary Culture of Oman (a.k.a. Rock Music Oman) course. For the past two weeks, 23 intrepid W&M students joined us for a scholarly, but adventurous, study tour across the Sultanate of Oman. This year’s course was spectacular, but distinctly different than previous years’…
-
Oman’s Geological Triple Point
Qantab is a village at the eastern edge of the Muscat metropolitan area, it’s hemmed in by steep rocky hills, and flanked by a broad strand that faces out to the Gulf of Oman. It is one of my favorite spots in Oman, and I recently visited Qantab with my research students on a Spring…
-
The Road to the Moho
I spent last week in the Sultanate of Oman, working with my colleague Professor Anne Rasmussen to setup a William & Mary study abroad program that we’ll run in January 2016. For much of the trip we were based in Muscat, meeting with our Omani colleagues to hammer out program logistics. With each passing day…
-
Dispatches from Oman: Juxtaposition
A new semester awaits 11,000 kilometers away in Williamsburg. Time to depart Oman, but before heading west towards home there was one last mountain to climb. I’ve had my eye on this ridge at the north end of Jebel Akhdar for months, as the view from its crest should provide an exceptional overview of the…
-
Dispatches from Oman: Fodder for the Tectonic Cannon
I’ve been in Oman for over ten days and seen plenty of deformed rocks—it is what I came for. What follows are a series of images illustrating deformed Omani rocks: there are folds, faults, fractures, and veins. This stuff is eye candy for a structural geologist. This first photo is a stitched panorama using our…
-
Dispatches from Oman: Wadi Jizzi – standing at the bottom of the Tethys Ocean
Our travels in Oman took us north from the capital region in Muscat to Sohar, a drive of some two hours along the Batinah Coastal Plain. This coastal plain is just that, a low relief plain sloping towards the Gulf of Oman and underlain by relatively young (Tertiary to Holocene) sedimentary rocks and sediments. The…
-
Dispatches from Oman: Ophiolite to Aflaj
The New Year finds me half-a-world away from William & Mary on a research trip to Oman. I am here starting a project focused on Oman’s spectacular geology and also laying the groundwork for a W&M study abroad field program that will focus on Oman’s iconic geology, its desert environment and distinctive culture. This trip…