Nevada field trip May 4-10, 2022 Nevada field trip, May 4-10, 2022 Led by Dan Sturmer, fifteen members of the Department – four undergraduate majors, four graduate
8 | The Upper Crust
students, three alumni, one of our staff, and three faculty -- went on a field trip to northern Nevada in early May. The trip was multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted, very educational, and a ton of fun. The geology of the Basin and Range in northern Nevada is tremendously varied and complex, illustrated by the stops organized by Dan (and described in the 185-page guidebook he assembled). Highlights included the Sierra Nevada frontal fault, the geomorphology of Lake Tahoe, Cretaceous plutonic rocks of the Sierra Nevada batholith at Donner Summit, Pliocene plant fossils and diatomite, Miocene tufa mounds, recent fault scarps, gigantic sand dunes, and petroglyphs, rocks of a Miocene lacustrine fan-delta system, 35 ka basalt lava flows (with olivine and pyroxene megacrysts), the latest Miocene to Pleistocene Lunar Crater volcanic field, upper Ordovician organic-rich black
