THE AFRICAN CONNECTION: A GEOLOGY FIELDTRIP FROM THE G.W. BRIDGE TO THE DELAWARE WATER GAP (Class and Field Trip)

The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School

Class will be Wednesday, Nov 28, 7:30-9pm, SOMS, room 112.

Field trip will be Sunday, Dec. 2, 8:30am-5pm, meet in the parking lot below Gleasons on Parker Avenue, Maplewood.

Metropolitan New York-New Jersey is located in an ancient rift valley that formed more than 200 million years ago when North and South America were joined to Africa in a huge supercontinent called Pangaea. It was a time when herds of dinosaurs, and flocks of pterodactyls and birds migrated over an ancient landscape of volcanic ash and lava with deep water lakes, deltas and meandering rivers in a climate that alternated between desert and tropical rainforest. As the plates spread further apart, a primitive ocean transgressed the rift valley that today (180 million years later) has evolved into the Atlantic Ocean. We will see remnants of mountains that, one billion years ago, rivaled the Himalayas and Andes; lakes that 200 million years ago were as deep as Lake Tanganyika; the pre-glacial Hudson River that flowed through Paterson and Millburn; and a glacial terminal moraine that forms an arc from Millburn to Long Island to Cape Cod (which represents the terminus of a major glacier that receded from this area a mere 15,000 years ago).

Find the perfect class at www.somadultschool.org.