This unit has interested me since I first learned about it, and I’ve visited it once before. Basanite is a somewhat rare and unusual igneous rock type, very low in silica and somewhat enriched in alkali metals. The Cieneguilla Basanite is the only basanite identified so far in the Jemez...Read more

For some time, Gary Stradling has wanted to find some good chunks of obsidian on which to practice his knapping skills. (Not to be confused with “napping”, at which we are both already skilled.) Raw obsidian suitable for toolmaking must of course come in chunks large enough to work with,...Read more

320 million years ago, New Mexico was a shallow tropical sea studded with large islands. These were the peaks of the Ancestral Rocky Mountains, formed when Africa collided with North America and compressed the Earth’s crust in the New Mexico area. Blocks of crust were forced upwards by the compression...Read more