| Several years ago we received an invitation from a couple of geology acquaintances to visit some world-famous Upper Pleistocene deposits exposed on California's Mojave Desert--the famous Manix Lake Beds, which have produced significant mammal, bird, fish, ostracode and fresh water mollusk faunas roughly 350 to 19 thousand years old (this was long before the region had been designated an Area Of Critical Environmental Concern). The plan of attack was quite intriguing: we'd rendezvous at a campground on a Saturday morning, then head on over to the fossil beds to search for late Pleistocene specimens. The larger plan of attack was to maneuver our four-wheel drive vehicles from the fossiliferous Manix Formation back to our base campground, a distance of several miles--all the while taking time to fossil-prospect the Upper Pleistocene Manix Formation. Quite an adventure, indeed, and one that began with great promise, as we found many identifiable late Pleistocene fossils during our explorations Saturday morning and afternoon. But trouble began that night while we were camped amidst the Manix Formation--that's when our mid-December temperatures began to plummet, all the way down to 20 degrees, and I'd neglected to add antifreeze to our radiator (our geologist acquaintances had taken antifreeze precautions, fortunately). The aftermath/result is captured for posterity in the image above--the jeep is "dead in the water," as it were, with a frozen engine block; for the better part of Sunday morning we heated buckets of water and slowly doused the block, hoping to defrost the block without cracking it. The author's Father (right) and one of our geology acquaintances (blue jacket) study the situation intently above; note the grayish bluffs in the background composed of the Upper Pleistocene Manix Formation. By mid Sunday afternoon we had the block thawed nicely, and the engine started up without incident--but then, when we began to leave (we had all decided to curtail our backcountry expedition--it was time to head on back to civilization, home) we discovered that we were stuck in the rather loose sand and silt. That started another round of work: digging out around the wheels and placing dry brush under the wheels for increased traction. Finally, we made it out alive and well, back to civilization in one piece after a most remarkable initial visit to the Manix Formation. |