Annual field trips used to be something of a tradition at UCMP, but that tradition faded once the Department of Paleontology merged with other units to become the Department of Integrative Biology in 1989. In recent years, former UCMP Director Jere Lipps organized and led three field trips: Baja in 2001, southern California in 2008, and Oregon in 2009. And now two of UCMP’s newest curators, Assistant Professors Seth Finnegan and Cindy Looy, are trying to revive the annual field trip tradition. Seth organized and led a trip to the Kettleman Hills and Death Valley in 2014, and this year, he and Cindy led one to southern California during Spring Break, March 21-28.
On March 21, Seth, Cindy, three UCMP staff (Lisa White, Dave Smith, and Erica Clites), and 11 grad students headed south from Berkeley, with their first stop being a locality south of Soledad along Arroyo Seco Canyon in Monterey County. Here, the group had their first look at the rocks of the extensive Miocene Monterey Formation and found pea crabs, bivalves, and brachiopods. The group would visit more exposures of the Monterey Formation along the California coast — at Gaviota State Park and El Capitan State Beach, west of Santa Barbara — and even as far south as Newport Bay.
At Piru Gorge, just off I-5 south of Tejon Pass, an attempt was made to relocate some plant localities reported by UCMP alum Daniel Axelrod (A.B., 1933; M.A., 1936; Ph.D., 1938), but without success. East of the gorge and the highway, some road cuts exhibiting nice geological features (cross bedding, ripple marks, etc.) were examined.
Jere Lipps — current Director of The Cooper Center, the fossil repository for Orange County — gave the group a tour of the Cooper facility. Afterwards, Jere took the group to a number of interesting localities in the Newport Bay area, including a visit to the Upper Newport Bay Nature Preserve with outstanding views of marine terraces. At the end of the day, Jere and Susie Lipps had the group to their home for a barbecue.
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, east of San Diego, was the next stop. The group spent two days looking at the geology exposed at Split Mountain and along Fish Creek Wash in the southeastern corner of the park. The rocks along the wash told some very interesting stories. Moving from east to west, the group examined cobble-filled layers believed to have been deposited by flash floods. Farther on, the rocks showed where an underwater landslide buckled unlithified ocean sediments. Close to the western end of Split Mountain, a series of turbidites — underwater sediment flows that result from slope failures at shelf margins or the distal edges of large river deltas — were observed. Even farther west down the wash, many layers of nearly equal thickness were suggestive of sands deposited out on a vast river delta of shallow slope.
From Anza, the group headed to the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge on the southeast shore of the Salton Sea. Here the group had an initial look at the lake’s beaches covered with dead barnacles and the bones of fish and birds. After a stop to admire some mud volcanoes near one of the 11 geothermal power plants located around the southern end of the Salton Sea, the group headed to the hills above Mecca at the north end of the lake. The group spent its final night in Painted Canyon after taking a hike through it and an adjoining slot canyon.
After a morning look at some roadside exposures of delta deposits, the group made the long drive back to Berkeley. All participants thoroughly enjoyed the trip and Seth and Cindy are already pondering where to go next year. Will it be the Great Basin? Channel Islands? Italy anyone?