Independent Component 1

Literal
a. I, Santiago Hernandez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work. 

b. "The Trona Pinnacles." Ridgecrest Field Office. US Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management, 8 Oct. 2014. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

State of California Department of Conservation. Jennings, Charles W., John L. Burnett, Bennie W. Troxel. Geologic Atlas of California - Trona Sheet. Map. 1:250,000. 1962. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

Trona Pinnacles. Trona: Searles Lake Gem & Mineral Society, 2015. Print.

d. I participated in the "Mud trip" and "Pink Halite" trips made available in Trona, California where I collected crystals and prospected for fossils and hiked in the Trona Pinnacles. I later cleaned the Hanksite crystals that I collected from the Mud trip at home and then wrote an essay detailing the probability of their being fossils at the Trona Pinnacles and detailing the context of such fossils.

Interpretive

Normally when a Paleontologist prospects for fossils they have to use a tool like a pickaxe to extract the fossils from the surrounding matter.

Like a paleontologist, I had to keep a sharp eye out to discern a crystal from a worthless hunk of mud and rock. The picture above shows me holding the largest Hanksite cluster that I found.

Just the same as the mud trip, I had to keep an eye out for salt crystals in this brine pool. However, sometimes paleontologists just stumble upon fossils and similarly with the Pink Halite trip I had to let my fingers stumble upon the crystals.

Underneath the crystals I have on display is the ledge of salt where the Pink Halite crystals were more abundant. Sometimes paleontologists just find areas that are rich in fossils.

The point of my participation in the Mud and Pink Halite Trips of Trona's annual Gem-O-Rama was to simulate the work of a paleontologist because during these trips I had keep a close a eye to discern crystals from worthless chunks of salt or rocks. A paleontologist does this on a normal basis when they prospect for fossils.

Since all of my pictures of my hike on the Trona Pinnacles are from my point of view, this picture is what it was liked to watch over a ridge on one of the taller Pinnacles. The earth here was noticeably coarse and pebbly.

In this picture, it is easy to notice the vast distance in between different Pinnacles and it is also easy to see that earth around this Pinnacle is very pebbly.

During the hike, I found this tiny fragment of a bone, but according to my mentor it was just "last weeks dinner" and not a fossil. This shows how observant I had to be to even find anything like this among the rocks.

The crystals that I collected during Gem-O-Rama were created from the minerals deposited by an ancient lake called Searles Lake. The Trona Pinnacles were also a product of this lake, so I hiked and prospected for fossils in them as a further simulation of the work of a paleontologist. 

Here I am clearing the mud off my Hanksite crystals just as a paleontologist would clean a fossil that is inside a chunk of rock.

After cleaning it in brine, the Hanksite crystals look really nice. This specific specimen has a tinier conjoined twin on its side.

After my trip to Trona, I needed to clean my Hanksite crystals and so this relates to paleontology because paleontologists don't always find fossil fragments, sometimes they have to extract it within a chunk of earth and have to take it to a lab to thoroughly remove all the matrix. The Hanksite crystals simulated this because I pretty much had to take them home with some of the mud that I found them in.


The essay I wrote relates to how probable it would be to find fossils at the Trona Pinnacles and the context they. This essay serves to simulate how paleontologists publish papers on any number of topics related to paleontology that add to scientific knowledge. My essay does this by analyzing the sedimentological makeup of the area around the Trona Pinnacles and their formation to reach an understanding of how viable that environment might have been to fossilize a creature.

Applied
Paleontologists largely rely on fossils as pieces of evidence to explain a world long gone. In the case of my independent component, the crystals I collected from Searles Lake are pieces of evidence pointing back to minerals that were once part of a large lake. Also, another foundation of my topic that my independent component helped me understand was fossil formation. Fossils are formed after many years of compression underneath layers of sediments. An example of how my project allowed me to further explore this information is my essay because I had to apply what  I knew about the process of fossilization and use that and other information I've gathered about Searles Lake to synthesize a report on how likely fossils were to form around the Trona PInnacles. However, I think that my independent component helped me most with understanding an answer to my EQ because it showed me that a great way to reconstruct the life of an organism is to find out the context in which it was found. My hike and analysis of the Trona Pinnacles showed me this by showing me that if I did find any fossils near them that I can instantly assume that the creature was at home in an aquatic environment or that it died somewhere that allowed to be washed into the bottom of ancient Searles Lake.