Cool! While the focus has been on Missouri so far, there will be plenty of Arkansas content down the road. One of us is also an Arkansas Ozark native and can't wait to give that area its due.
Us, too! We're going to be working on a series of FAQ videos as well tackling simpler concepts, so hopefully that's useful as well. Love to hear about kids getting interested in the natural world.
You're welcome! We're looking forward to it as well. Just a very busy time of year right now and we need the channel to grow before we can dedicate more time to it (and, of course, vice versa). But the next video is in production, we promise. Will be glad to have your feedback as we progress.
Thanks! We've been putting a lot of planning into this (hence the month-long break in videos) and hope it's of broad interest. There's so little good/accurate info on Ozark geology on UA-cam or elsewhere.
I grew up in Missouri 1956-1980 and spent 10 year of that in the Ozarks. I went to college in Springfield, Missouri 1968-1973, then flew for a commuter airline based at Fort Leonard Wood but lived in nearby Waynesville. During my years in Missouri, I was an active spelunker and explored many wild caves in the Ozarks, so I know the area well. Sadly, the EPA forced the last lead mine near Flat River to close. There were zinc mines also, but I believe all of them have been closed, too. During my youth, I used to frequent Johnsons Shut-Ins State Park near Lesterville in Southeast Missouri, and the Elephant Rocks. Can you please do and expose' on the Johnsons Shut-Ins? They were a very unique geologic phenomenon and great fun to swim in and dive from the cliffs there.
Joel, thanks for the request! We have a series of videos planned on the St. Francois Mts. area, including Johnson's Shut-Ins, Elephant Rocks, and Hughes Mt., but they won't happen until this winter as that's a better time to film and document their rock formations. I hope you'll stick with us until then!
I am REALLY enjoying your content. Thank you so much for all your excellent work! In this series introduction at 2.05 you mention taking a look at Ozark streams and their typically heavy loads of chert gravel. I have a property that covers ~1,000 feet of a stream course at the tail end of a 1 mile ephemeral section of Pearson creek near Springfield MO. The creek runs full time both above and below this section which is choked with deep deposits of chert gravel that are actively migrating downstream. Looking at historical aerial photos of the area, it appears much of it was farmed right up the creek banks through around 1940 and I suspect this may be at least partially responsible for the overload. I'm very interested in learning if there are any ecologically sound, economically viable approaches to restoring stream flow in this section.
Thank you! This is a great question. Some research has been done on Ozark gravel pulses, such as the paper linked below, whose abstract states (in part): "During the last 160 years, land-use changes in the Ozarks have had the potential to cause widespread, low-intensity delivery of excess amounts of gravel-sized sediment to stream channels. Previous studies have indicated that this excess gravel bedload is moving in wave-like forms through Ozarks drainage basins." With the caveat that we're not professional civil engineers, and that we haven't seen or visited your site, our opinion would be that it's best left alone. Gravel-choked streams are a regional reality and intensive restoration efforts to remove the gravel may do more harm than good; you may even find that a large flood moves it on downstream. If your concern is that stream flow is temporarily interrupted, well, it's also the case that losing streams are quite common in the Ozarks due to karst effects, so a thick gravel pulse ends up somewhat mimicking that natural pattern. We think the reality is that this is just a long-term effect of past land use that current land managers have to accept, just like long-term alterations in the ecosystem that can't be entirely restored in the short term. Think of it like the once-pine-dominated hills of the central Ozarks, which can probably never be fully restored because they were dependent on a regional fire system that's incompatible with modern settlement and land-use patterns. Thanks again for your support of the channel! www.usgs.gov/publications/gravel-sediment-routing-widespread-low-intensity-landscape-disturbance-current-river
Andrew Folts, there was a miniature island species of elephants or mastodons in the Mediterranean area that left skulls that looked remarkably like huge human skeletons with just one eye socket. Folks have speculated in academic papers that these skulls were the origin of the Cyclops legend. So, your observation may be much closer to the truth than you might think!
Andrew, what you're seeing is actually the nasal cavity on the front of the skull, where the trunk would attach. The eye sockets are off to the side. Terry's right, the ancient Greeks seemed to interpret that central socket as a single eye, especially since trunks are all soft tissue and don't easily leave fossilized evidence behind. Check out this link for a brief discussion and a decent photo (scroll down to the Cyclops section): www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythic-creatures/land/greek-giants
Terry, have you run across the book "The First Fossil Hunters", by Adrienne Mayor (2000)? It's a cool discussion of how paleontology influenced Green and Roman thinking.
Andrew, just to be clear, there were never one-eyed elephants, and the Greeks encountered their fossilized remains, not the live creatures. That's why they didn't realize the front socket on the skull was the trunk cavity; they didn't have access to a living equivalent. Terry's saying that the elephant skulls looked like they had one eye socket, not that they actually did.
@@ozarkoutsiderThat was an easy one, considering I have a picture on my refrigerator, one my brother sent out as a Christmas card, of me popping out of a ravine on top of Hughes Mountain. It's hilarious, I look like some kind of giant gopher surrounded by rocks! Someone told me the rock looked like they were from that scene in on an island in the middle of the cave in the Harry Potter movie series. I hope you been to the quarries and shallow, large shafts at the top of Iron Mountain. Sometimes it's open, sometimes it's closed, it depends how recently someone drunk has run off the cliff at night. They used to be a really cool tree trunk propping up the ceiling in one spot, but someone stole it. The hematite is, of course, very cool. I once showed a friend how I could write her name in red using two steel gray rocks scraping against each other. Folks don't expect that. Devonite is another definite rarity near Fredericktown. It's a lovely rock, which I believe is found in only other one spot in the world.
Thanks for sharing ideas! Also, just to clarify, Hughes Mt. is rhyolite, not basalt. Both are volcanic rocks but with very different mineral/chemical compositions.
@@ozarkoutsiderexcellent correction, thanks! While I was aware that many of the hills in that area are rhyolite - compacted and remelted ash from some nicely stupendous volcanic eruptions is my recollection - rather than granite, I never stopped to think how the _only_ resemblance Hughes Mountain rocks have to basalts is hexagonal vertical cracking. Apart from that, the rocks look similar to the rhyolites of, say, Iron Mountain. The only basalt I can think of is a lovely depressed (weathered out) dike at the east end of the Silvermines dam. The Great Unconformity that exposed those rocks is beautifully visible just west of Fredericktown, where uncovered fossil rhyolite islands appear as rounded hills. Dr Beveridge, if you happened ever to know him or of him, let me show fellow students on a field trip how, at the base of those fossil islands, you could find and peel weathered round rhyolite stones apart like onions. The stones were from right at the end of the Great Unconformity, sealed up in dolomite just before they would broken down fully. A couple more: Grand Gulf! Lovely spot, a park now, I think. Best and largest natural bridge I know if in Missouri. The pink granites a few miles due east of Fredericktown, now public with some name I can never recall (Almea? A-something). On the micro end: Magnetite and ilmenite sand accumulate around trees on the beach of the old Silvermines park. No one knows the intrusion source, but it must lie between the mines and the bridge, since I've never found magnetite around the dam. Micro-scale topaz is common in the white Silvermines opals. It gave the miners fits by wearing out bits. Short, fascinating history, Silvermines. There was tungsten (wolframite) mining there bruefly in WW II, also.
Sounds great. That's what I'm after. Now I have got to change channels and find it. Don't have time just to listen to someone talk about what he might talk about.
Not sure I understand this comment. Are you concerned that this video wasn't comprehensive? This topic is far more complex than we could cover in a single video, so we're covering it as a series. You can follow the relevant playlist to get the entire series as it comes out. And like coverage of any complex subject, we felt that an introductory overview was needed so folks know what's coming, just like an introduction in a book or research paper. If your meaning was otherwise, please clarify so we can help you out.
The Ozark region is my favorite place in the world.
Sorry I overlooked this comment. We agree it's a special place and we're enjoying trying to help more folks appreciate it.
I’m an Arkansas Ozark native and I’m just finding this channel! Great content!!
Cool! While the focus has been on Missouri so far, there will be plenty of Arkansas content down the road. One of us is also an Arkansas Ozark native and can't wait to give that area its due.
I live in Fredericktown. My son has a budding interest in rocks and fossils. I’m glad I found this 😊
Us, too! We're going to be working on a series of FAQ videos as well tackling simpler concepts, so hopefully that's useful as well. Love to hear about kids getting interested in the natural world.
Looking forward to the whole series! Thanks for doing this.
You're welcome! We're looking forward to it as well. Just a very busy time of year right now and we need the channel to grow before we can dedicate more time to it (and, of course, vice versa). But the next video is in production, we promise. Will be glad to have your feedback as we progress.
Man I love the ozarks so much history in those hills
Wow, I can't wait! Roadside Geology of Missouri is a nice read if you're planning a roadtrip through Missouri.
Thanks, Gary. If you check out 0:16 in the last video (channel summary) you'll see me holding up a copy!
@@ozarkoutsider Ah yes!
Gonna be awesome.
I can't wait to follow this. Great job!
Thanks! We've been putting a lot of planning into this (hence the month-long break in videos) and hope it's of broad interest. There's so little good/accurate info on Ozark geology on UA-cam or elsewhere.
Same, I love learning about the ozarks, it's a mysterious and overlooked place.
Thanks for doing this
Hope you enjoy!
I grew up in Missouri 1956-1980 and spent 10 year of that in the Ozarks. I went to college in Springfield, Missouri 1968-1973, then flew for a commuter airline based at Fort Leonard Wood but lived in nearby Waynesville. During my years in Missouri, I was an active spelunker and explored many wild caves in the Ozarks, so I know the area well. Sadly, the EPA forced the last lead mine near Flat River to close. There were zinc mines also, but I believe all of them have been closed, too. During my youth, I used to frequent Johnsons Shut-Ins State Park near Lesterville in Southeast Missouri, and the Elephant Rocks. Can you please do and expose' on the Johnsons Shut-Ins? They were a very unique geologic phenomenon and great fun to swim in and dive from the cliffs there.
Joel, thanks for the request! We have a series of videos planned on the St. Francois Mts. area, including Johnson's Shut-Ins, Elephant Rocks, and Hughes Mt., but they won't happen until this winter as that's a better time to film and document their rock formations. I hope you'll stick with us until then!
I am REALLY enjoying your content. Thank you so much for all your excellent work! In this series introduction at 2.05 you mention taking a look at Ozark streams and their typically heavy loads of chert gravel. I have a property that covers ~1,000 feet of a stream course at the tail end of a 1 mile ephemeral section of Pearson creek near Springfield MO. The creek runs full time both above and below this section which is choked with deep deposits of chert gravel that are actively migrating downstream. Looking at historical aerial photos of the area, it appears much of it was farmed right up the creek banks through around 1940 and I suspect this may be at least partially responsible for the overload. I'm very interested in learning if there are any ecologically sound, economically viable approaches to restoring stream flow in this section.
Thank you! This is a great question. Some research has been done on Ozark gravel pulses, such as the paper linked below, whose abstract states (in part): "During the last 160 years, land-use changes in the Ozarks have had the potential to cause widespread, low-intensity delivery of excess amounts of gravel-sized sediment to stream channels. Previous studies have indicated that this excess gravel bedload is moving in wave-like forms through Ozarks drainage basins." With the caveat that we're not professional civil engineers, and that we haven't seen or visited your site, our opinion would be that it's best left alone. Gravel-choked streams are a regional reality and intensive restoration efforts to remove the gravel may do more harm than good; you may even find that a large flood moves it on downstream. If your concern is that stream flow is temporarily interrupted, well, it's also the case that losing streams are quite common in the Ozarks due to karst effects, so a thick gravel pulse ends up somewhat mimicking that natural pattern. We think the reality is that this is just a long-term effect of past land use that current land managers have to accept, just like long-term alterations in the ecosystem that can't be entirely restored in the short term. Think of it like the once-pine-dominated hills of the central Ozarks, which can probably never be fully restored because they were dependent on a regional fire system that's incompatible with modern settlement and land-use patterns.
Thanks again for your support of the channel!
www.usgs.gov/publications/gravel-sediment-routing-widespread-low-intensity-landscape-disturbance-current-river
i live on the bank of a large Shale deposit in the Ouachita/Boston Mts. area, and am fascinated by the geology of the region.
There's a lot to be fascinated by!
Interesting how the mastodon’s eyes are so close in the skeleton that it almost looks like a cyclops!
Andrew Folts, there was a miniature island species of elephants or mastodons in the Mediterranean area that left skulls that looked remarkably like huge human skeletons with just one eye socket. Folks have speculated in academic papers that these skulls were the origin of the Cyclops legend. So, your observation may be much closer to the truth than you might think!
Andrew, what you're seeing is actually the nasal cavity on the front of the skull, where the trunk would attach. The eye sockets are off to the side. Terry's right, the ancient Greeks seemed to interpret that central socket as a single eye, especially since trunks are all soft tissue and don't easily leave fossilized evidence behind. Check out this link for a brief discussion and a decent photo (scroll down to the Cyclops section): www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythic-creatures/land/greek-giants
@@TerryBollinger Wild! Even miniature, I bet it would have been intimidating to stare down an elephant with only one eye.
Terry, have you run across the book "The First Fossil Hunters", by Adrienne Mayor (2000)? It's a cool discussion of how paleontology influenced Green and Roman thinking.
Andrew, just to be clear, there were never one-eyed elephants, and the Greeks encountered their fossilized remains, not the live creatures. That's why they didn't realize the front socket on the skull was the trunk cavity; they didn't have access to a living equivalent. Terry's saying that the elephant skulls looked like they had one eye socket, not that they actually did.
0:57 top of Hughes montain? Amazing location with a gorgeous view. I'm not aware of any other well-developed basalt column outcrops in the Ozarks.
You nailed it!
@@ozarkoutsiderThat was an easy one, considering I have a picture on my refrigerator, one my brother sent out as a Christmas card, of me popping out of a ravine on top of Hughes Mountain. It's hilarious, I look like some kind of giant gopher surrounded by rocks! Someone told me the rock looked like they were from that scene in on an island in the middle of the cave in the Harry Potter movie series.
I hope you been to the quarries and shallow, large shafts at the top of Iron Mountain. Sometimes it's open, sometimes it's closed, it depends how recently someone drunk has run off the cliff at night. They used to be a really cool tree trunk propping up the ceiling in one spot, but someone stole it. The hematite is, of course, very cool. I once showed a friend how I could write her name in red using two steel gray rocks scraping against each other. Folks don't expect that.
Devonite is another definite rarity near Fredericktown. It's a lovely rock, which I believe is found in only other one spot in the world.
Thanks for sharing ideas! Also, just to clarify, Hughes Mt. is rhyolite, not basalt. Both are volcanic rocks but with very different mineral/chemical compositions.
@@ozarkoutsiderexcellent correction, thanks! While I was aware that many of the hills in that area are rhyolite - compacted and remelted ash from some nicely stupendous volcanic eruptions is my recollection - rather than granite, I never stopped to think how the _only_ resemblance Hughes Mountain rocks have to basalts is hexagonal vertical cracking. Apart from that, the rocks look similar to the rhyolites of, say, Iron Mountain.
The only basalt I can think of is a lovely depressed (weathered out) dike at the east end of the Silvermines dam.
The Great Unconformity that exposed those rocks is beautifully visible just west of Fredericktown, where uncovered fossil rhyolite islands appear as rounded hills. Dr Beveridge, if you happened ever to know him or of him, let me show fellow students on a field trip how, at the base of those fossil islands, you could find and peel weathered round rhyolite stones apart like onions. The stones were from right at the end of the Great Unconformity, sealed up in dolomite just before they would broken down fully.
A couple more: Grand Gulf! Lovely spot, a park now, I think. Best and largest natural bridge I know if in Missouri.
The pink granites a few miles due east of Fredericktown, now public with some name I can never recall (Almea? A-something).
On the micro end: Magnetite and ilmenite sand accumulate around trees on the beach of the old Silvermines park. No one knows the intrusion source, but it must lie between the mines and the bridge, since I've never found magnetite around the dam.
Micro-scale topaz is common in the white Silvermines opals. It gave the miners fits by wearing out bits. Short, fascinating history, Silvermines. There was tungsten (wolframite) mining there bruefly in WW II, also.
Sounds great. That's what I'm after. Now I have got to change channels and find it. Don't have time just to listen to someone talk about what he might talk about.
Not sure I understand this comment. Are you concerned that this video wasn't comprehensive? This topic is far more complex than we could cover in a single video, so we're covering it as a series. You can follow the relevant playlist to get the entire series as it comes out. And like coverage of any complex subject, we felt that an introductory overview was needed so folks know what's coming, just like an introduction in a book or research paper. If your meaning was otherwise, please clarify so we can help you out.