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Description
Scene from the upcoming sequel to my novel "The Outsider"

Jacob rode over an hour to get to the landslide. Even from a distance it was obvious the pump and the well it supplied were total losses. A piece of pipe and part of a solar panel randomly poked up between broken slabs of shale, pushed several yards from their original site. Jacob found a piece of chain-link fence wrapped around a rock. The rest of it was buried. He took some pictures, mindful of including background features that would allow the site to be compared to what it looked like just a day before. He hoped that would be enough. If he and the employees had to push aside all that shale to uncover more of the pump, that would suck.

Leaving his father's horse to graze on grass of dubious nutritional value, Jacob stepped over the jumbled slabs of shale to have a closer view of the exposed formation. At first what he saw didn't surprise him. There were two thick shale layers of slightly different colors: dark beige at the bottom and dark gray above that. Jacob vaguely wondered about possible fossils. When he had some free time, he'd have to come back with his geological excavating gear and pry apart some of the shale. Then, as he examined the division between the two layers, he noted a thin layer of much lighter clay, about two centimeters thick, topped by a thinner layer of blackened carbon. The light gray line ran along the entire cliff-face, all the way between the darker beige and gray layers.

"Holy shit. K-T... Looks like we've got a K-T layer... on our own property..."

Jacob knew that trying to explain the significance of what he had just discovered to Aaron would be futile. Aaron was a Creationist, and the only reason he had consented to letting Jacob study geology out-of-state was the hope that the younger Dumfries could use his education to find aquifers and energy deposits. A water or oil discovery could turn around the family's fortunes and save the ranch. Telling his father about trivial things such as fossils or a layer of light grey rock would be a complete waste of time, and most likely result in a long-winded lecture about Genesis or various conspiracy theories.

However, Jacob hoped that the response from the professors at DSU would be a different matter. He tried to temper his excitement. Was this really a K-T layer? Without access to proper testing equipment, he could not be totally sure, but it certainly matched what he had seen in his classes.

Jacob took pictures along the entire length of the exposed formation. He moved around the fallen debris, looking for samples that contained part of the thin light-colored layer that he could pack up and take back to the house. He'd have to come out several more times to help his father deal with the insurance claim, so he could return better-prepared to collect and carry away larger samples. Upon returning to the house, he downloaded the insurance claim pictures into his father's desktop. Then he opened his college laptop and downloaded his own pictures of the cliffside and the gray line of deposits.

Several days later, Jacob returned to the site with excavating tools, burlap sacks, and a second horse. He turned over and split apart slabs of fallen shale, ostensibly to try to uncover more pump pieces, but in reality trying to find out more about the deposits. He found several good samples of rocks containing the light gray layer. He spotted something even more interesting: three small clam fossils imbedded in a slab from the lower part of the formation. Jacob knew that those clams would be extremely important for dating the strata and hopefully confirm it was indeed 66 million years old. He decided to quit searching at that point, and return to his father's house with what he had found so far.

Description
Scene from the upcoming sequel to my novel "The Outsider"

Jacob rode over an hour to get to the landslide. Even from a distance it was obvious the pump and the well it supplied were total losses. A piece of pipe and part of a solar panel randomly poked up between broken slabs of shale, pushed several yards from their original site. Jacob found a piece of chain-link fence wrapped around a rock. The rest of it was buried. He took some pictures, mindful of including background features that would allow the site to be compared to what it looked like just a day before. He hoped that would be enough. If he and the employees had to push aside all that shale to uncover more of the pump, that would suck.

Leaving his father's horse to graze on grass of dubious nutritional value, Jacob stepped over the jumbled slabs of shale to have a closer view of the exposed formation. At first what he saw didn't surprise him. There were two thick shale layers of slightly different colors: dark beige at the bottom and dark gray above that. Jacob vaguely wondered about possible fossils. When he had some free time, he'd have to come back with his geological excavating gear and pry apart some of the shale. Then, as he examined the division between the two layers, he noted a thin layer of much lighter clay, about two centimeters thick, topped by a thinner layer of blackened carbon. The light gray line ran along the entire cliff-face, all the way between the darker beige and gray layers.

"Holy shit. K-T... Looks like we've got a K-T layer... on our own property..."

Jacob knew that trying to explain the significance of what he had just discovered to Aaron would be futile. Aaron was a Creationist, and the only reason he had consented to letting Jacob study geology out-of-state was the hope that the younger Dumfries could use his education to find aquifers and energy deposits. A water or oil discovery could turn around the family's fortunes and save the ranch. Telling his father about trivial things such as fossils or a layer of light grey rock would be a complete waste of time, and most likely result in a long-winded lecture about Genesis or various conspiracy theories.

However, Jacob hoped that the response from the professors at DSU would be a different matter. He tried to temper his excitement. Was this really a K-T layer? Without access to proper testing equipment, he could not be totally sure, but it certainly matched what he had seen in his classes.

Jacob took pictures along the entire length of the exposed formation. He moved around the fallen debris, looking for samples that contained part of the thin light-colored layer that he could pack up and take back to the house. He'd have to come out several more times to help his father deal with the insurance claim, so he could return better-prepared to collect and carry away larger samples. Upon returning to the house, he downloaded the insurance claim pictures into his father's desktop. Then he opened his college laptop and downloaded his own pictures of the cliffside and the gray line of deposits.

Several days later, Jacob returned to the site with excavating tools, burlap sacks, and a second horse. He turned over and split apart slabs of fallen shale, ostensibly to try to uncover more pump pieces, but in reality trying to find out more about the deposits. He found several good samples of rocks containing the light gray layer. He spotted something even more interesting: three small clam fossils imbedded in a slab from the lower part of the formation. Jacob knew that those clams would be extremely important for dating the strata and hopefully confirm it was indeed 66 million years old. He decided to quit searching at that point, and return to his father's house with what he had found so far.