2
expedition to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal, West Africa. It was a very small
expedition, just me, a graduate student and a French geologist from Cheikh Anta
Diop University (also known as the University of Dakar), Senegal.
Early one morning I was sitting on a large rock in the Walidiala Valley, in the far
southeastern corner of Senegal, 600 kilometers from the coastal capital city of
Dakar and within a stone’s throw of Guinea, watching my student climbing up the
steep hillside in front of me slowly and carefully logging (graphically describing)
the various kinds of sedimentary rocks over which he was scrambling while my
French colleague collected samples. It was hot, of course, and the air was still. I
stood up to walk over to a tree under which I’d left my backpack and water bottle.
We carried a lot of water and so our backpacks were somewhat of a burden even
though we were only a mile or two from our Land Rover. Unfortunately, our packs
became heavier rather than lighter as the day progressed because we replaced the
water with rocks! These were specimens that my student and I were taking back to
our home laboratory in the US to study and describe in detail. I drank deeply and in
the shade of the tree I took off my hat in the futile hope that a little air to the head
might cool me down. As I walked back to my seat, perhaps because I had removed
my hat, the sunlight reflected off a small rock and it caught my eye. It was light in
color, a buff-grey, in sharp contrast to the rocks on the floor of the valley that had a
reddish tinge to them. I picked it up. It was quite nondescript, maybe 10 cm in
length and width and 3 or 4 cm in thickness (Fig. 1.1). For some reason I placed it
in a canvas sample bag and put it in my backpack. I carefully recorded its location
in my notebook and did not give it another thought for several weeks.
Our Senegalese samples that we had dispatched in a wooden box via sea freight
finally arrived in the US about two months after our departure to cooler climes. My
student excitedly prized open the box and sorted out his samples. And there was my
little light-colored rock. The goal of our research was to build upon research I had
conducted while living in Sierra Leone. We were seeking rocks that had originally
been deposited by coastal and shallow marine glacial processes as much as 635
Fig. 1.1 The sample of
dolostone from the
Walidiala Valley,
southeastern Senegal that
yielded two early
Cambrian fossils of the
enigmatic species,
Aldanella attleborensis.
Pen for scale. (Image by
Laura de Sousa)
S. J. Culver
expedition to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Senegal, West Africa. It was a very small
expedition, just me, a graduate student and a French geologist from Cheikh Anta
Diop University (also known as the University of Dakar), Senegal.
Early one morning I was sitting on a large rock in the Walidiala Valley, in the far
southeastern corner of Senegal, 600 kilometers from the coastal capital city of
Dakar and within a stone’s throw of Guinea, watching my student climbing up the
steep hillside in front of me slowly and carefully logging (graphically describing)
the various kinds of sedimentary rocks over which he was scrambling while my
French colleague collected samples. It was hot, of course, and the air was still. I
stood up to walk over to a tree under which I’d left my backpack and water bottle.
We carried a lot of water and so our backpacks were somewhat of a burden even
though we were only a mile or two from our Land Rover. Unfortunately, our packs
became heavier rather than lighter as the day progressed because we replaced the
water with rocks! These were specimens that my student and I were taking back to
our home laboratory in the US to study and describe in detail. I drank deeply and in
the shade of the tree I took off my hat in the futile hope that a little air to the head
might cool me down. As I walked back to my seat, perhaps because I had removed
my hat, the sunlight reflected off a small rock and it caught my eye. It was light in
color, a buff-grey, in sharp contrast to the rocks on the floor of the valley that had a
reddish tinge to them. I picked it up. It was quite nondescript, maybe 10 cm in
length and width and 3 or 4 cm in thickness (Fig. 1.1). For some reason I placed it
in a canvas sample bag and put it in my backpack. I carefully recorded its location
in my notebook and did not give it another thought for several weeks.
Our Senegalese samples that we had dispatched in a wooden box via sea freight
finally arrived in the US about two months after our departure to cooler climes. My
student excitedly prized open the box and sorted out his samples. And there was my
little light-colored rock. The goal of our research was to build upon research I had
conducted while living in Sierra Leone. We were seeking rocks that had originally
been deposited by coastal and shallow marine glacial processes as much as 635
Fig. 1.1 The sample of
dolostone from the
Walidiala Valley,
southeastern Senegal that
yielded two early
Cambrian fossils of the
enigmatic species,
Aldanella attleborensis.
Pen for scale. (Image by
Laura de Sousa)
S. J. Culver