Blog Post #2: Canyon Lake Gorge Field Trip

The field trip to Canyon Lake Gorge was a very interesting and exciting, fun field trip. Honestly, I've loved dinosaurs and prehistoric life since I was little (I remember receiving a dinosaur encyclopedia for Christmas and it wasn't one of those basic kid ones either), so the trip was fun. Searching for small prehistoric fossils like the fossilized sea urchins, gastropods, and other shells and ancient sea critters was fun. Some of the stuff, if not most, I had already known- such as the fact that prehistoric sauropods walked like an elephant, leaving figure eight style foot prints due to their round feet. I also knew that carnivores had a 3 toed- very bird like foot print and moved in a weird swaying motion. One thing I found very interesting was the fact that scientists, paleontologists, today have found a way to find patterns in the rock using high powered microscopes and are now able to tell fossilized colors and that they have already figured out that dinosaurs were very colorful. I never knew that was even possible and when I heard it, it just blew my mind. I also thought the landscape was beautiful, I loved the small series of waterfalls where ferns were growing, that was spectacular. I wanted to just climb around and have fun wandering off wherever and exploring the landscape.