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 Student Travel Grants Available

10th CAVEPS and Quaternary Extinction Symposium
March 29 - April 2, 2005
Naracoorte, SA, Australia

CANQUA June 5-8, 2005
NOTICE: The server to the Winnipeg CANQUA abstract submission site has been periodically down for the past day or so. Please try again if you've been rebuffed; the format and address can be found on the meeting web site <http:www.umanitoba.ca/canqua>. We are extending the deadline until next week.

2^nd International Congress
“The World of Elephants”
Hot Springs, South Dakota, USA September 22-25,  2005

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2005 Northeastern Friends of the Pleistocene meeting

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Society of American Archaeology Fellowship Announcement

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Friends of the Pleistocene

Northeast Cell
The 60th annual reunion of the northeastern cell of the Friends of the Pleistocene was held on May 30-June 1, 1997 in Ledgewood, New Jersey. Fifty five participants examined some of the results of new surficial geologic mapping in northern New Jersey. The 2 day field trip included outcrops of late Wisconsinan, Illinoian and pre-Illinoian till; a Pliocene fluvial deposit; a stacked section of late Wisconsinan, Illinoian, and pre-Illinoian colluvium; a gravel lag on an upland erosion surface that may be of late Miocene age; fossil pingos; wind gaps in Kittatinny Mountain; a late Wisconsinan recessional moraine; and postglacial terrace deposits in the Delaware Valley. Topics of discussion included wind-gap evidence of drainage evolution; age and origin of the Schooley and Somerville erosion surfaces and their correlation to depositional stratigraphies and to the marine oxygen-isotope record; the relative effects of periglacial, interglacial, and preglacial erosion; the colluvial record of hillslope evolution during repeated periglacial cycles; conditions of recessional moraine formation; and postglacial fluvial adjustments of meltwater-fed rivers to changing sediment load, vegetation, and valley gradient. Additional guidebooks are available for $10 from Scott Stanford, New
Jersey Geological Survey, P.O. Box 427, Trenton, NJ 08625; scotts@njgs.dep.state.nj.us

Pacific Cell
Quaternary Geology of the Yucca
Mountain Area, Southern Nevada
October 9-11, 1998

Topics include soils and stratigraphy; advances in the dating of Quaternary deposits and surfaces; the influence of climate change on eolian, fluvial, and hillslope processes; and the characteristics of long-recurrence Great Basin faults. Bus transportation will be provided for the first day on the east side of Yucca Mountain. Details will be available in early 1998. Contact: John Whitney or Emily Taylor, USGS MS 425, Denver, 80225; Larry Anderson or Ralph Klinger,
Bureau of Reclamation, Denver; rklinger@do.usgr. gov; FOP web site: chroma.cr.usgs.gov.

Rocky Mountain Cell
Sixty-three hearty souls braved iffy weather and cantankerous chair lifts at the 1997 Rocky Mountain Cell FOP trip in the Aspen-Glenwood Springs area Oct. 12 14, 1997. On day 1, Jim McCalpin introduced FOP'ers to the mysterious world of sackungen, as exposed atop Aspen Highlands Ski Area. During day 2 Bob Kirkham described how salt dissolution over the past 10 Ma has created a very large hole in central Colorado, and expensive real estate is still going down the drain today, creating employment opportunities for engineering geologists. Giant debris flows were the subject of Bruce Stover's day 3 presentation, with a later stop by Jon White on Pleistocene landslide (?) dams in Glenwood Canyon. Despite a good attendance of students, the younger generation faded early each evening, and by 10 pm, the only drunks around the campfire were old balding field geologists, Okies, and the odd Russian. Steve Reneau won the 1st Annual FOP Homebrew NonCompetition on points (gotta love that spruce beer), but the masses were mainly cooler-diving for Kelly Ponte's fabulous Okie ales, the names of which I might remember if I hadn't drunk so many. The 1998 Rocky Mountain FOP will be led by Bruce Harrison of New Mexico Tech, who was nominated and selected in absentia; let this be a lesson to all future Quaternary scientists, FOP slackers, and young faders.

Jim McCalpin
GEO-HAZ Consulting, Inc mccalpin@geohaz.com

Eastern Cell
The 1998 field meeting of the Eastern Cell will be held on eastern Long Island, May 15-17, 1998, with headquarters in Montauk, New York. The meeting will include a Friday evening program and reunion and Saturday and Sunday field trips. Trips will highlight the nature of the terminal moraine and recessional moraines, evidence of two glaciations, and the late glacial erosion of the terminal moraine south of the Montauk Peninsula by the rising sea. A boat trip to Block
Island is planned (depending on the weather) to compare the drift sheets and the moraines. Host for the meeting will be Les Sirkin, Earth Sciences, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY 11530.

Midwest Cell
Processes and Environments:
Laurentide Ice Sheet Margin,
North-Central Wisconsin
May 29-31, 1998; Merrill, Wisconsin

Participants will gather the evening of the 29th. There will be an all-day field trip by bus on the 30th, and a half-day field trip by car caravan on Sunday the 31st. The field trips will offer the opportunity to evaluate processes and environments along the margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet in north-central Wisconsin. Specific topics will include complex ice-flow patterns, the pattern and sequence of ice disintegration and landform development, depositional processes, and the influence of late glacial climate on landscape evolution. Leaders are John W. Attig, Nelson R. Ham, and David M. Mickelson. For information contact: John W. Attig, University of Wisconsin-Extension, Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey, 3817 Mineral Point Road, Madison, WI 53705; jwattig@ facstaff.wisc.edu

South-Central Cell
Geography and Geology of the Grand and Black Prairies of Texas
April 3-4, 1998; Waco, Texas

The principal interests of this trip are the Grand and Black Prairies, that together form the Cretaceous Prairies of Texas. Where they were, what they were, what they have become, and how they and their evolutionary successors have influenced the human history of Central Texas are all interests of this trip. The trip is planned as a weekend event; the first day will be a transect of the Grand Prairie of Texas, from Waco to a point near Comanche; the second day will involve a transect of the Black Prairie (now Blacklands) from Waco to Tehuuacana. Both trips will originate on the Baylor Campus in Waco, both Friday and Saturday nights will be spent in Waco. The banquet will be on Saturday evening, at the end of the Grand Prairie trip; place, menu, and speaker to be announced later.

The Grand and Black Prairies together formed the Cretaceous Prairies of Texas, which in turn formed a substantial part of the southern grassland-Great Plains of this continent. To recount, early visitors to the American Midcontinent saw enormous grasslands, extending almost without interruption from the Gulf Coast Prairies of South Texas to the plains of Alberta, and from what is now eastern Kansas to the Rocky Mountains. Within this great sea of grass lesser prairies, including the Grand and Black Prairies of our interest, were in some way exceptional but in the larger view also far more similar to the prairies that surrounded them than to any other landscape of this nation. But we will see that small differences have had large effects on human history. Differences in geology have contributed to significant variations in landform, soils, vegetation, indigenous animal populations, human history and changing land use. Field trip leaders: Peter Allen (Baylor); David Amsbury (NASA); Paul N. Dolliver (Geomap); O.T. Hayward (Baylor); Lee Nordt (Baylor); Joe Yelderman (Baylor). Contact: O. T. Hayward or Joe Yelderman; 254 755-2361; fax: -2673; O_T_Hayward@baylor.edu; yelderman@ baylor.edu