Castles and Coprolites

What better way to start the new year than with a post on a small but satisfying achievement. Last year I was contacted by the EGU (|European Geosciences Union) about featuring a photograph of mine on their blog series . The EGU have an open access image repository where you can upload geoscience themed photographs for reuse. They chose a photo of mine that is actually quite old - I uploaded it in 2010, and it was taken in 2007. At the end of 2017 they had a competition to vote for the top 12 images of the year, and it turns out that my photograph was selected . Some of the samples I collected during that trip have been featured on thin section of the month . This was actually the second time I visited Fiji, the first being for my undergrad dissertation around 2003 . I visited with the same team in 2007, scouting out potential postdoc projects. It unfortunately never got off the ground but I still have those ideas in the back of my mind, maybe some day I will get back there. As you...

This month we have a beautiful set of micrographs from a limestone cave on the Rove Penninsula of Fiji. These samples were collected as part of a pilot study with the University of the South Pacific way back in 2007, when I was avoiding finishing PhD write up and decided to go do some field work in the South Pacific, as you do. The samples come from a test pit that was excavated to identify the sequence of sediments within the cave, and to assess whether there was any Lapita occupation. The micromorphology samples were collected to identify activity traces that may be associated with the occupation. In the end the samples were not prioritised as the dates suggested that the occupations were much more recent, within the past 1000 years. However I do like to go back to them time to time, and will hopefully write something properly on them when I have time. For now I will share these beautiful images, maybe some of the most beautiful I have seen! The cave was incredibly humid, in fact t...