Objectives: Try to find a different geology environment North of the Hab, in Snoshti Canyon.

Summary of Findings: We had a very long morning trip across hilly terrain (4 - wheel drive required almost all the time!) North North West of the Hab.

We travelled up and down for 3 hours and a half. We noticed that the landscape during this EVA was almost the same as what we had seen the previous days: lava cobbles, variegated chert, a lot of glittering gypsum (Figure 1), limestone strata in mudstone-siltstone hills and often sandstone strata.

However, this time we also found red lava, which usually means that it is older than the black lava because the iron gets oxidised with time (Figure 2).

We discovered three different sites on Hab Ridge with Gryphaea (bivalves) fossils scattered all over. They are in a very bad condition so we cannot establish their specie. We found in a document about Southern Utah, that there are two possibilities for these kinds of fossils: one is Gryphaea Newberry from the Cretaceous period; the other one is Gryphaea Fratera Planoconvexa from the Jurassic period. Remote Science Team confirmed that since Hab Ridge is in the Dakota, and hence Cretaceous, the bivalves we found must be Gryphaea Newberry from the Cretaceous period. We can say that they lived in muddy sea beds originally cemented to small particles of rock in the past, they were called Devils' toenails!

During the last week, we also found very translucent and polished pebbles, of about 4cm length (Figure 3). Today, we maybe discovered an explanation on the web (Salt Lake City library): they may be "gastroliths", which means that these stones were gizzard stones dinosaurs used to help grind and digest their food». Unfortunately, as we had not the GPS yet, we did not get their coordinates.

Figure 1 Multicoloured gypsum

Figure 2 A piece of black lava and one of red lava

Figure 3 Good rocks for Dinosaurs' digestion??