Anna's Adventures in Geotope Land

A Geotope is –
--a rare or critical geologic and/or paleontologic occurrence.

With a bit of luck from the Gods of Olympos, Erosion, Alpine Deformation, a stray Glacier or two, and a particularly active Mesohellenic compression, they also become landforms and outcrops of spectacular beauty that attract the non-geological tourist as well. In the month of May, I had the opportunity to catalogue Geotopes in Thessaly, Greece, essentially from stem to stern. Greece in high spring is glorious enough, but combined with some world-class geology, it nears paradise. Pure geology, pure Greece.

Anna’s Adventures – Day One

Grevena never felt more like a city center – traffic, triple-parked cars (negotiating around these almost resulting in two accidents), stop lights for the love of God! Am I ever getting through the County offices where no one is really as helpful as I need at the moment or gone altogether?

But then I take off. Forget, of course, to start mileage counter until I’m ten miles gone. Slowly, the Greek countryside takes over – Venetikos River gorge, into the dense spring of Hasia.



A stop at Carperon Township City Hall actually rounds up a guy who’ll take me to a site -- not the one I want, which is apparently inaccessible with recent rains, a canyon probably more favored as a trekker’s site than geology anyway, I hope, but the locals are most proud of their “flaming spring.”We drive off through some of the most glorious oak forest I ‘ve ever seen (this not important, of course, to the greater goals of Geotope sites) and reach a meadow with a small dark stream with a pipe sticking out of it. This pipe froths over, cold water with soda bubbles, and is, I’m told, flammable.The site, an oddity of a seep from some small hidden coal deposit underground, is a favorite for the locals. The TV has been here numerous times, and Greek coffee and eggs have been boiled over the natural gas spring to provide amusement for one and all.We’ve got to light it, just to verify these reports.No one smokes in our small crowd, no has any matches, and until a convenient farmer passes by the lonely country road who happens to smoke and lends us a cigarette lighter, can we test it. Ah yes! It is lit, though the flame is colorless and burning hot, it doesn’t show upin the photo.In leaving, I wonder if the guide left the flame turned on, or turned it off.“Thank yous” and promotion for pet projects over with at the Township Mayor’s office, I leave first for more well-known places alongside My Vounassa, and take off across the old road to Kalambaka. I’ve been down it perhaps 30 years ago with a geologist who is now dead, and another who’s had a stroke. What little I remember bears no similarity to what is exposed now along the newly paved road.I find paradise – spring in unspoiled Greece, immense hills and gorges and mountainous terrain where I had expected, well, not much. Rocks, too, extension of the Paleozoic basement where I didn’t expect to see it, and then the Tertiary molasses – no intervening ophiolites, Eldridge prediction proves true, as it does so often.I can’t describe adequately the glories of country Greece in high spring. I know as I’m passing that it’s one of those trips I can only keep in my mental memory’s video.The conglomerates of Meteora loom, literally loom, as a unique rock series, even here, kilometers from the spires. I wonder how so primitive a conglomerate formed and continued forming to attain such great thicknesses – it’s the extension through time of what is normally a fairly ephemeral deposition event.Perhaps this timelessness in the rocks is the base of the timeless quality of the monasteries.I did pass by Kalambaka, investigating the roads south of Morgana that I hoped would take me where I want to go, but no – absolutely gorgeous, but they don’t pass into the Koziakas ophiolite. I feared getting lost in the green woods, along winding roads with not enough signs to tell where you are anyway. I had in mind perhaps to go as far as the Pertouli ski center, but – I saw the world’s most immense mountain before me, laced with snow, topped by threatening clouds – I guess that was far enough for the day!At least I found a “short cut” back to Kalambaka. And some of the loveliest weird mushrooms.I had in mind some hotels on the east side of town, out of the city center and tourist district, but the roads are being worked on. So I circled, found a sign that lead to another, and another, and eventually far off the beaten track to an exceptionally clean, friendly, and surprisingly cheap Zenona – The Arsenis Guesthouse.The perfect merging of country Greece with the rooms with Sat Tv and Air Conditioning – flocks below the large balcony. Good food all grown by the owners. Nice family, a bit lonely,

The building stones composed of coral-bearing limestone are my favorite.

Corals, I note, are considered as rock-building creatures, since their skeletons make up the limestone itself. Could we consider humans as rock-building creatures? Not with our skeletons, luckily, but we surely could consider our buildings and our garbage dumps as "man-made" rock formations. 

The good stuff in the walls is limestone, not marble, and I'll hazard a guess that it's Cretaceous but haven't looked it up.

There are an abundance of stones full of bivalves, as in this stone... 

First note that these old guys that build the walls did not waste money. The wall here has an internal wall made of conglomeratic stones (possibly derived locally?), and the more showy (and expensive) marble makes up the outer walls. 

What stones make up the fortress of the Acropolis?

The walls of the Acropolis are an amazing record of the geology of Greece. The building stones are a mix of those used in the original construction, some added at various ages to fix things up, a few that one thinks might be the additions of a cheapskate constractor of whatever era, and stones added today to help us visit. 

The Parthenon Marbles Today

Thirty years ago when I first visited the Parthenon, the mica and pyrite glinted silver and gold. Since then, the air pollution has weathered these minerals to lines of grey rust within the marble. Two years ago, I could find fresh pyrite in only a single block exposed on the tourist's trail, but last week, that too was oxidised. There's no way to undo this damage, but consider instead that the marbles of the Parthenon are still evolving to the changing conditions of the world today. Evolution means life. 

Inside the Marble of the Parthenon

The marble of the Parthenon itself is not pure white stone, but a lovely marble with tracings of silvery mica and gold pyrite. This excellent stone was chosen, I believe, simply because it was beautiful. There were plenty of marble quarries to chose from, but the ancients celebrated this stone, and while you can visit its quarry today, sadly the supply of this marble have been exhausted.
I also suspect, that this marble contributed the inspiration for all the cheap plastic tiles in low-cost hotels scattered over the world. 

Pure White Marble

This is what most folk imagine marble to be -- pure white rock, frozen remnant of former sea life. This column, from near the Theater of Dionysos, certainly demonstrates that our ancients had access to an abundance of pure white marble, yet in the photos above and below, you'll see that use of this type is in no way universal. 

The Columns of the Acropolis

The buildings of the Acropolis date to a period of about a thousand years, during which the styles of columns changed --no not just the Doric to Corinthian architectural styles, but the essence of the stones themselves. These, from the early Roman period, are marble with swirling veins of white calcite. 

Journey to the Underworld beneath the Acropolis

The archeological story of the Acropolis goes back several thousand years. The Geological story starts some half billion years ago, and continues today. Some photos of my favorite geological sites on the Acropolis follow in the postings above.

Hope you enjoy them! 

The Oldest Fossils in Grevena?

Possibly, the skeletons in this photo are the remains of the oldest fossils in Grevena that we can see with the naked eye. These are fossils of Belemnites, small sea creatures related to our modern kalamarakia. These belemnites swam in the ancient Tethyan Sea, about 170 million years ago. This was the same time when dinosaurs roamed the land, and possibly swam in the waters alongside these little creatures, and perhaps even ate them.

These rocks, found near the village of Langadakia, are not the oldest in Grevena. Older rocks in our area don’t seem to have large fossils, but contain abundant microfossils, the skeletons of plankton that lived in the seas, that we can only see using powerful microscopes.

The Tracks of Worms -- 35 million years ago!

My friend, Anna Merlini from the Univeristy of Milano, points to the tracks of ancient worms that lived in the muds of a shallow sea about 35 million years ago. These muds became rocks, and the rocks are now found alongside the road leading to the village of Dotsikos.

Worms have no skeletons, and thus cannot become fossils. Only their burrows and tracks are preserved. The muds of ancient Dotsikos must have been a paradise for the worms of the past!

My best model -- Terry the Tervuren. Sit, Terry! Now SMILE!!!  

Not the bee in the close up -- even at this reduced blog image, it's terrific clarity. 

MY NEW PENTAX istDs is THE BEST CAMERA IN THE UNIVERSE!  

Valia Kalda, Pindos. About a 30 minute drive away these days. 

Grevena -- 1977 

Serious flowers! Glyfa 2005 

Glyfa Spring 2005 

Just for reminding me --

There are hassles in life no matter where you live. I'm posting these photos to remind myself just why I live here, for those times when the hassles impair my memory and my outlook.

Should I start with a pretty picture of...

Greece in Spring, 2005, Glyfa?