CWU's Nick Zentner presents 'Plant Fossils in the Pacific Northwest' - the 25th talk in his ongoing Downtown Geology Lecture Series. Recorded at Morgan Auditorium on April 10, 2019 in Ellensburg, Washington, USA. www.nickzentner.com
Nick NEVER disappoints! These lectures, in my opinion, are pure gold. I can't praise his ability to educate us all enough. As I have said before, this man is a force of nature in and of himself.
The quality of your lectures, compared to the first lectures to now, Nick are just fantastic. It's so much easier to see the blackboards, audio is much better, overall just outstanding. The content of your lectures is always fascinating. I'm studying B.Geoscience in Australia, I hope to come to Washington one day. Keep up the fantastic work Nick.
How surprising was that link between Oz and the US in that other lecture. Tickled my geology fancy that eh. Have been fascinated by some of the geology in the Helidon Hills just west of Brisbane so was quite intrigued at this link between our two continents. Would love to find out more.
I was so very impressed with the story of Professor Beck and his contributions to the science of Geology. That he was also a Professor of Music at the same time makes him a true renaissance man. BTW: NickZ rocks too!
Ray Norman I concur. I'm a bit unsure of why that beautiful mural is hanging there in a spot where it could be spoiled if people rest their heads again it.
I'm retired at 61 and Prof. Nick's lectures have been a great use of my time while staying isolated. I just wish there was someone doing something similar on the east coast since I live in PA but we don't have nearly as interesting "active" geology over here.
I am sure that George Beck would be pleased with his grand son passing the journals on where they can be preserved and appreciated. Thanks for telling the story and Thanks to George Mitchell for not trying to monetize his inheritance.
Amazing! everytime I listen to you I am just enthralled.. If I had had you as a teacher when I was a lad I probably would have ended up a geologist.. I live in vancouver washington and hope that soon I can make a trip back to your area and at least catch one of your lectures.. I am not is such good shape these days but I might even try to go to some of these wonderful spots you have mentioned just to see the geology of it all.. To look again at the surrounding land and to know it's history, to envision what it must have been like.. How thrilling it seems to me.. even now I remember so many of the places I have ventured to, here in the pacific northwest.. and with the eye of understanding (which you have brought to volition in me) I see it all anew.. It is a good thing, when at older age you find new things.. The world kind of becomes old and familiar the older you get.. not as in the days of youth when all things are new and out there to be discovered..Thanks Nick you have a talent that is amazing and I am glad to see you using it to benefit so many others.. May God bless you in ways that thrill you!
Variety is important--vary media, vary focus on people and types of stuff, vary between hard and ready, vary between serious and funny--but keep your focus by including language that provides explicit transitions, connections, and time relationships.
Hey, Teach: Muffler Boy can’t hold a candle to…BOW TIE MAN! Only took me maybe 6 complete viewings to coin that bit of silliness. Love ya, and thanks a million for all of the knowledge from all of talks and classes you have so generously shared with all of us in RU-vid Land. Ciao, bella!
marbleman52 that’s what I’m saying!!! Being born and raised in the NW spending much of my time outdoors I’ve learned so much from Nick through all these series videos. Would love to see one in person!!
Nick, the word WIZARD comes to mind as I finish your second lecture of this series. I am ready to move to Washington for my rock hound fix, and I am a Wisconsin lifer at 70 yo. You enliven me in so many ways as you dance across the stage full of information, geology at its BEST. Thank you ever so for being yourself in public.You Brave Wizard You
As a child growing up in the PNW this info would have been so precious. It makes me happy future generations have equal access as the rich folks who can take courses and such. I hope this remains free.
I got head to toe goose bumps when he visited the grandson of George Beck. I think I would have passed out seeing all those journals. What a find. Thank you Nick for your research skills and perseverance to find what you share with us.
If I were a geologist or biologist, this would be most certainly a lecture I would not want to miss. If I were a theist I would be most certainly disturbed by many of facts learned here. As I am none of these I can just lay back (while knitting a sweater) and marvel at the unimaginably long string of violent as well as microscopic events that took place on our living and kicking planet. If any of them had not happened or happened differently most certainly we would not be here to be fascinated by this. This lecture is a jewel.
I know where you can get those huge palm fronds, like the ones hanging in the museum today. I ran across a couple dozen of them deep in the woods, along with hundreds of fossils around the 1s.f. size. They are "near" the 2009 land slide at race horse creek, but they are not from that slide event.
I salute you Nick for your fantastic lecturers!!! A+ 👍🏻😊👊🏻 I’ve been watching from Guadalajara Mexico the past few years where I have lived in my 50s (first comment) when I’m bored and have time...definitely some of the most interesting viewing on utube imo being from Washington and living between Seattle, Kennewick and Spokane due to parents divorce while graduating from UW in business 30 years ago. Sadly never visited the Burke Museum as a student in early 90s but our entire state has fascinating geology and you sir are a great lecturer! Great content and thanks to CWU too! I’m a huge fan of you and your work, as well as those that help you provide us viewers interesting lectures! Gracias John:)
Over the years, I have visited many of these fascinating places. I really want to revisit them now with "new eyes" thanks to these lecture series over these past years.
I dont live in the Northwest or even America or the Northern Hemisphere for that matter but have watched probably 50 of these lectures and am familiar enough with the material to follow and sometimes predict what the next reveal might be. Watching these has now made me watch a number of Documentaries on the geology and ancient history of my own corner of the globe Eastern Australia. I have never been interested in Geology or related fields beyond the excitement of Volcanoes and now I am. My point is it takes a special ingredient to state someone not interested in a subject and get them to be so and that special ingredient is a rare thing, A good teacher! Well done Nick
Another great lecture Dr. Nick! One thing I had heard at John Day Fossil Beds in reference to those warmer times (not just the PETM) during the Paleocene/Eocene was due to a warm ocean current running up the eastern Pacific from the south (like the Gulf Stream brings warmth to the east coast and the UK). That current eventually petered out or moved, where now a cold current runs down from Alaska to Washington and Oregon. That change in climate is reflected in the fossils as they transition from semi-tropical to cooler climates from 51Ma to about 5Ma. But is that the new thinking about the transition from warm to cool?
Excellent lecture, comprehensive and interesting as always! Apologies this comments is a few years late, but is there a link anywhere online to that amazing animation starting at 40:18 showing continental drift throughout the Epochs? Noting that there is a CWU logo in the lower right corner, so presumably it was developed in-house? Here's an idea if you haven't thought of it already: Develop a 'sequel episode' overlaying ice sheet advances and retreats along with rising and falling sea levels, in particular showing how little land area is left un-submerged during the PETM, i.e. when both polar ice caps were melted, with perhaps a sidebar graphic showing estimated atmospheric CO2 concentration. Now that would be BOTH a real mind-boggler AND a valuable climate-policy public service!
Thanks for posting this. When a graduate student studying Anaplasmosis with the Agricultural Research Service I was tending rodent traps out in the Owyhee Mountains looking for baby ticks on the rodents, actually, when trying not to fall down on the uncertain footing found a leaf fossil sticking out of the ground. Looking around more I found two others which I collected and heretofore was unable to place in geologic time. Thank you!
Great job Nick. I'm slowly getting through all of your video's. I would love to see any info you have about the shifting around of the African plates and the tearing away of the northeast area. Thank you brother. Always a fantastic job you and your whole crew do.
Love the content. University in my phone. I’m an engineer but this content really broadens my knowledge. Thanks so much for ur dedication to sharing your life’s work
There are no logs in the vantage sediment because they float! The pumice, too. So after each lahar a graded sediment layer falls to the bottom of the lake but the logs remain on the top. Your petrified logs are therefore, probably, from all the lahars....maybe mostly the later ones if the earlier ones rotted away.
The thing of it is I see mostly all people in there , but my goodness this is interesting . We need to learn about the past so we can better understand the future .
OH yah; good to see Hank showing up here. I recognized the voice before the face LOL. Nick's gotta know him; Hank teaches at U of MOntana in Missoula IIRC.
This is a great series of lectures from which I am learning many new things. I was aware of the "56 High" and thought that was the thing that made palm trees thrive that far north, but did not know when it happened or how long it took to build up, or that it is called PETM Now I have an improved understanding of some of the forces involved. It is great to live in a time and place where almost everyone, regardless of class or social distinction, can have access to such educational material.
These lectures are thoroughly fascinating! They really make me want to go to Washington and explore it! Heck, I might need to move there long enough to take his entire class.
As a kid, living in Selah in the '60s, I was in the Boy Scouts. I don't recall exactly where we were, but my Troop was camping in the mountains west of my area. I was always interested in geology and had an extensive rock collection, and always had my eye out for new specimens. I picked up a strange rounded rock about two inches in diameter from some gravel near the small river at the site, but had no idea what it was. Back home, I took it to a teacher, who could also not identify it, who then sent it to a friend of his in the profession. It was determined to be petrified camel dung. I donated it to that teacher. Now, I live in south central Idaho. Four years back I found petrified cactus of the genus Cereus. I presented that to my father as a gift. He lives in Moses Lake and had someone at WSU examine it for confirmation. They were amazed, as was I. Thank you very much for your informative teachings. I am a fan.
Love this stuff, I know exactly where you are talking about. I have lived in WA all of my life and very much love the geological history of this state. Very busy.
Dear Nick, yet another fine presentation, thoroughly enjoyable. Somewhere about 2/3rds through you were using an animation that had the history of the continents on a time-line which you can slide to show the state of the globe at any time in history. Is that animation in the public domain? I would love to add it to my collection of interesting files. Cheers.
Holy crap. I have noticed several things like you have mentioned about the fissure. You have answered my questions. I grew up in the Columbia gorge and have always imagined the forces that caused these geological forms.
Sure am glad I found this channel. I went to college just for the very in depth geology that you can't find in a public library. Don't need to join college now!!!
Nick, your lectures are awesome, i love them so much and I'm from Montreal, Qc, with no geologic background whatsoever, to give you context, nothing could be further from my everyday life than this, but you make it very interesting and always enjoy them, i know more about the pacific northwest geology than most Washingtonians do i bet :) ...anyhow, got into this over interest in the last ice age effects on our planet, and being that here in Qc, we have the oldest bedrock, our vallee was a flood plain from those days, it is evident on google maps, so all of this actually does have meaning to us in this part of the continent, with all that ice on it scraping away past geologies, glad i got into your series, watched every single one (lost hammer in the cracks was a highlight :)) you and Randall Carlson have a lot in common on this subject, maybe a little meet-up would be appropriate (if you don't know him already) anyhow take care buddy, and know you are a great teacher, wish i had geology with you when i was young ;)
Is it the information or the teacher that keeps you hooked to the ipad for more than one hour? Even it concerns an area thousands of kilometers away from where you live. For the moment I go for the second in the first place, but the information is also a good second. Thank you for this lecture on a Easter afternoon from The Netherlands. See you next week.
As always, I'm impressed with the amount of detail and evidence presented by Professor Nick Zentner! Thank you for yet another brilliant and informative video! Unfortunately, I can't find many plant fossils around south-central Wisconsin. But on April 20th 2019, I did find my 3rd and largest "Honeycomb Coral" fossil fragment, weighing 120.1 grams! Contact me, and I'll send you photos of this specimen, and some details to where and how it was found. Thanks again, and be safe! I'm looking forward to your next video/s!
For those of us who have never taken a geology course…. This is like opening a Pandora’s box of unfamiliar, strange and wonderful information. I think we all suspected that someone, somewhere had been studying such things…. And now, here it is. And even within this tsunami of information… the fact remains that this is all just the last 100 million years of a 4 billion year old planet!
Just curious.... have you ( Nick) heard of the expanding earth hypothesis? Wind could have blown Australia, china and Siberian sand into west coast. I know its hard to explain where the extra volume is coming from..... besides that. Can u make an un biased video on the pros and cons of the theory? It is important to hear opposing theories as well as the accepted theories. Btw. Love your enthusiasm and geological expertise. I listen to your lectures all day while i work!!!! Thanks and keep em coming!!!
All those exotic terranes were part of those earlier Central and South American islands that were in those equatorial locations, and fossilized down there, and moved northward in later times.
Professor, I believe the trees were drowned by prehistoric lakes and water logged which would keep them preserved and on the bottom, the the ginkgo flow would've flowed towards the water cooling as it flowed into/on to the lake cooling on top of those logs!
There is a massive plant fossil deposit not far from me in Clinton BC Located right on the side of the road. The fossils are encased in a very white brittle stone.. Love to hear Nick's take on it...
The confusion people have between dinosaurs and the mammoth makes me think of the irritation experienced by archaeologists when people assume they are dinosaur hunters. I have an archaeologist friend who has a Tee shirt emblazoned with large letters that say, " I'm An Archaeologist. NO! I don't do dinosaurs."
@@mariashelly6392 There has been a sort of malignant dumbing down in America, but my archaeologist friend with the Tee shirt is English, as are the people it is intended for. There was a flat earth conference here in Canada and one in the UK. Being a member of an intelligent species does not necessarily indicate intelligence in the individual member of that species.
If a lahar brought the logs to Lake Vantage, would the volcanic particles settle out of the water before the logs became so waterlogged to sink? Would this explain the graded bed in the Vantage sediments and the logs above?
*lets out a fangirl squeal because a new Geology video is up with my favorite Geologist* I really REALLY wish my body would let me hike all over hell and breakfast... because I would NOT be doing the major I am doing now if I could. I've crawled all over much of the state of Idaho, and then my back said no more. :( I still try tho! I was given my Grandma's old walking stick so her strength and love of the outdoors will be with me. :)
