Panoramic shot of El Gordo diapir (white area directly below the flat topped plateau) this is the location where I did most of my fieldwork for my project. The point where this picture was taken is about half way between the beginning and the end of the area I covered (15km total from end to end)., La Popa basin, Mexico

Ammonite Fossil (pencil for scale), La Popa basin, Mexico
An ammonite is a type of marine organism that looks a bit like a squid with a shell attached to it’s body. They went extinct with the dinosaurs.

Ophiomorpha burrows (ruler for scale), La Popa basin, Mexico
Ophiomorpha are a type of prehistoric shrimp that lined their burrows with their own fecal pellets. We typically find only their burrows (dwelling structures) and thus they are referred to as trace fossils and they study of them is referred to as ichnology.

Los Cabritos (baby goats) that would follow us around while we looked at the rocks, La Popa basin, Mexico

Butterfly, La Popa basin, Mexico

Camouflaged lizard, La Popa basin, Mexico
photo © Kyle Shipley

Spider, La Popa basin, Mexico

Upper Sandstone Member, La Popa basin, Mexico
One of five different rock units I studied for my project.

Me and my strapping field assistant working hard, La Popa basin, Mexico

Flat Irons at Potrero Chico, La Popa basin, Mexico
Limestone cliffs that were formed when water eroded down the center of an anticline (a dome shaped structure of rocks). The name flat iron refers to the fact that they look the bottom side of a regular iron.

La Mission wall with el Papalote (the windmill) in background, La Popa basin, Mexico

La Mission an abandoned missionary complete with partial wall, church, bunk house and kitchen, La Popa basin, Mexico

Petroglyphs (Jacob Staff for scale), La Popa basin, Mexico

Blue lizard
La Popa basin, Mexico

Camp at Sunrise, La Popa basin, Mexico

La Popa lentil is a big carbonate reef (limestone bed made by corals and algae), La Popa basin, Mexico

Stuck in the mud in Mexico (this doesn’t happen very often but when it does it’s a nightmare because the roads are primitive and you’re lucky if they’ve ever been graded), La Popa basin, Mexico

El Papalote (Spanish for “the windmill”) diapir, La Popa basin, Mexico
A diapir is a cylindrical body of salt that is typically buried below the earth’s surface, though the ones in Mexico are exposed at the earth’s surface. The salt diapirs in Mexico were once covered by the ocean, and influenced where reefs would form. The reefs commonly formed rings around the exposed salt and are now preserved in this location. Salt diapirs are also all over the Gulf of Mexico and largely responsible for hydrocarbon maturation and often drilled for petroleum (oil).

Gastropod @ K-T boundary (finger for scale), La Popa basin, Mexico
The Cretaceous period (K) is when the dinosaurs lived and by the Tertiary period (T), which immediately follows the K period, the dinosaurs were extinct. This extinction surface is a boundary defined by time and is referred to by geologists as the K-T boundary. It is one of several major mass extinctions during the Earth’s history. An extinction is defined as the total disappearance of a species. The others are: the end of the Ordovician period, the end of the Devonian period, at the end of the Permian period at the Permo-Triassic boundary, the end of the Triassic period, and at the end of the Eocene period at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. To understand geologic time use the picture provided © Geological Society of America, include link to the in depth version at the Idaho Museum of Natural History’s website.