Brunnenburg Semester Program

Its been too long, I know that because I just looked at the last post I made last fall AND I received a nice reminder from Ron... Good to know that someone out there actually reads this stuff! I took a "break" as I was preparing for a semester abroad teaching at Brunnenburg Castle in the South Tirol of northern Italy. The castle overlooks the city of Meran near the village of Tirol (a.k.a. - Dorf Tirol).

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It is an amazing intersection of German/Italian and mountain/valley cultures framed by some incredibly geology and influenced by a remarkable history. As I was preparing for a discussion on the regional geology, I realized just HOW intimately linked this region is in the development of the science of geology and the geologic time scale... The Jura Mountains lie to the northwest, and although the link to the Jurassic Period is clear, the evolution of Agassiz's hypotheses regarding continental scale glaciation also blossomed in these mountains! I was lucky enough to find a reprint of his 1840 "Études sur les glaciers, Neuchâtel" - complete with woodcuts and transparent sketches- on Ebay a few years ago. For a really nice interdisciplinary analysis of the quest to understand "ice" - I recommend The Ice Finders, in which Bolles weaves the lives of Agassiz, Kane (one of my favorite explorers), and Lyell into a fascinating story!

Sections from the Jesse Earl Hydge Collection

Lithograph from Etudes sur les glaciers, 1840

Similarly, we are close to a number of localities (e.g. - Tuscany, Florence, Appenine Mountains, etc) visited by Nicholas Steno (1669) - (including many Wunderkammer - or cabinets of wonder or curiosity). One of the most famous is Ole Worm's Wunderkammer depicted below. Most importantly, this is the region that helped shaped his thoughts on superposition/stratigraphy and dogma surrounding the age of the Earth (also where he wrote the Prodromus).

Ole Worm's Wunderkammer.
For an excellent discussion of the relationship between Steno and the Wunderkammer I recommend Rosenburg's 2006 article in Geology.

Brunnenburg also isn't "too far" from Frieberg, Germany where Abraham Gottlob Werner (1787) was trained, taught, developed his concept of Neptunism, that is rocks crystallizing out of early oceans, and his classification scheme for rocks (Primitive, Secondary, Transition, Tertiary, and Volcanic) - which our modern geology time scale still borrows from (e.g. - Tertiary/Quaternary).

Comparison of Hutton and Werner - from here

And one can't live in Italy without thinking of Gubbio... Made famous (geologically) by Alvarez et al. 1980 after publishing: "Extraterrestrial Cause for the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction" after finding high concentrations of Iridium. This was groundbreaking work given the general acceptance of Uniformitarianism and difficulty Gene Shoemaker had in convincing the scientific community that catastrophic impacts played an important role within this accepted philosophy. Almost any 101 geology student can identify the K-T boundary as the point where dinosaurs exist and then cease to exist, but being able to touch that boundary (littered with extraterrestrial material) would be truly amazing... (Hint, hint... hoping to visit).

Field photo in Gubbio from here

There are obviously more geologic links to this region and I'll be posting more frequently now, updating with photos and trip descriptions... Look for an upcoming post on Erdpyramiden, and Mt Etna! Until then, here's a view looking northeast from Tirol towards the Passeital Mountains through a vineyard (the proper way to admire mountains here).