Friday Rocks: K/T Boundary

My Friday Rocks photo shows the K/T boundary, aka the Cretaceous/Tertiary Boundary. I took this photograph in August 2011, when I was out in the field with the Dig School, a wonderful education program co-founded by Burke Museum paleontologists Greg Wilson and Lauren DeBey. We were about 16 miles north of Jordan, Montana. The site is known to paleontologists as Lerbekmo Hill, after geologist Jack Lerbekmo. One of the highlights of the spot is that I could place my hand on the iridium anomaly layer, the famous bed of material that helped geologists understand what happened to the dinosaurs, and many others, at the end of the Cretaceous. In addition, about ten miles away is the location where Barnum Brown found the first specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex. It’s certainly one of the niftiest spots for any geogeek to visit.

Here is another view of the location showing the different layers.

K/T Boundary