h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Reader comments or critiques are certainly welcome and actively solicited". I'm glad to know that.

Here's a list of some of the terms or phrases I didn't understand.

Geomorphological
Relief
mass wasting processes
mesas
Tertiary
extrusive
basalt
caprock
Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) strata
The mesas show considerable relief.
capstone
the current elevation line of the mesas with its projection on the foothills. In the case the mesas it also depicts the current rims of those features.
seep spring
Laramie Orogeny
regional uplift
Front Range streams

I'm sure that a good dictionary can provide a concise explanation of these (as mine did for 'mesa'), and that inserting these in the entry will do a great deal to improve its readability and understandability for the sort of average reader that you are likely to get on this site. This would undoubtedly increase its chances of being recommended for the Edited Guide, in my opinion. But it's your entry, of course, and it's entirely up to you.

Almost nobody flames anybody here, Rita. You are perhaps new here, and didn't know that. We aren't an orals committee: there's no-one you needs/must vigorously defend yourself from, either.

Guide style *perhaps* has absolutely nothing to do with 'standards of English Composition in scholarly discourse....' Your objection is sharply illogical. Geological journals have a style sheet and submission guidelines that may or may not please you; yet, even though you were exquisitely erudite, you are required to meet them in order to get published. What's worse, is that the impetus for everyone to get published is stong and journal space is only so large, so sometimes you need to be *nice* to the publishing folks. Even the ones who don't deserve it.

Your title is exact, but it won't be necessarily useful to a reader of the guide. I suggest: 'Some ways that the Earth is shaped' or 'Evidence of Erosion in Colorado'.

I have a BS in Geology, I understood all the terms, and I did not get your premise from reading your article. Perhaps if I knew what formations they were from, and what the rocks were made from, and what was the supposed or known agent(s) of mass wasting for the area, it would be more clear to me. What is the strike of most of the fissures in the mesas-does it explain why they are divided and the interesting inroads into the sides of each? Is there any exposed (perhaps degenerate)caprock findable along the slip of the fault that might have similar fossils underneath?

I think there's a university project on geological terms lurking in here somewhere. Maybe after I get my geographical concepts project finished.

Hi there!

Well, I found this very interesting, but I agree that some of the terms used need to be whittled down a little so that the average layperson could understand it... I had to make assumptions as to what some meant so I *think* I might have got to grasps with it...

Don't be disheartened by our comments!

Caper Plip

Can I suggest a shorter/less technical title?

"How an ancient lake shaped todays landscape around Golden, Colorado"

OK so it's not much shorter but it is a bit more accessable to the layman?

Feel free to ignore it, explaining even the simplest geological terms can be a nightmare.

PQ (lapsed geologist surrounded by laymen...I won't be posting my dissertation to the guide...it was about clay)

Is there a geological timescale anywhere in the guide? That would help with the era/timescale words and might also help graphically illustrate the time involved?

Oh and if you want any help in coming up with simple description of geological terms I'm more than happy to help (just dont ask me to write anything like an article or go anywhere near GuideML)

Thank you, Sea Change. Your comments are most helpful and I apologize for appearing to "flame" people.

The fault appears to cut across the monocline of the Laramide Uplift in the Golden city area. The effect of this has been to submerge the hogbacks for a space of several miles in the vicinity of the town. This is probably why the creek follows a course through the town, although, in principle it could have cut down through the hogbacks rather easily. There is evidence of an ancestral stream further south that cut down into one of the major hogbacks until the stream was pirated by another emerging still further south that did cut down through the major Dakota Formation hogback all the way to the prairie surface.

The absence of hogbacks in the vicinity then should be related to the fault but also might be related to an ancestral stream valley that doesn't follow the strike of the fault as far as I can tell.

Unfortunately, the slip surface of the fault is evidently buried and can't be examined directly although I've observed some apparent offsets in a Pierre Shale and Laramie Formation exposure further south that may be associated with a recent episode related to the main fault. The scale is very small though, on the order of one meter of apparent movement in the Laramie and a similar amount in the Pierre although it's improbable that the full extent of the movement would be recorded in the Pierre since it's rather slippery to begin with. So the event was probably minor and indicates a slight compressional release in the overturned strata associated with the main fault.

The basalt on the mesas caps early tertiary formations near the K-T boundary. I suspect they date from around 63-64 MYA, which would be lower Paleocene and contemporary with the lower Arapahoe/Denver Formation. The exposure on the southeast slope of South Table Mountain shows a Cretaceous sandstone, probably part of the Laramie Formation approximately 10-12 meters below the base of the rimrock. I can't tell if it's lying in conformity or not, but I suspect it isn't because there's some slight indication of an erosional surface underlying the Tertiary layers. The ancient lake might have begun in fact as a remnant of a lagoon associated with littoral dunes on the shore of the Cretaceous inland sea for all I know. It later evolved into an small inland, freshwater lake in the midst of a forest after the sea retreated to the east.

I can see, from your comments, that I probably should have done more research respecting this site and it's audience. This may not be an appropriate entry, and I may not possess an appropriate temperament at the moment to deal with the publishing people here. Quite frankly I submitted it almost as a joke, not believing that it would be taken seriously at all. So no one was more surprised than me to discover the range of comments that has resulted.

I've provided links to a glossary and a time scale in the entry that may be helpful. I've also slightly altered the text but haven't yet decided how to incorporate the implications of your critique. Please let me know if the forgoing discussion makes any sense or makes the "premise" any clearer.

Thank you again and no flames intended.

Dear Rita,

Don't take me ultraseriously, I happen to be one of the more mean reviewers here, it's hard for me to be smug about that when you can be so incisive. Consider it my wounded pride.

I found the links you added, and your comments here to be helpful to my understanding of what your precis is about.

I would say based on the response you have gotten so far, and my experience here in Peer Review, that there is much h2g2 community interest in this article. There are Edited Entries here about quantum mechanics and other abstruse topics, and they all went through some stage of Peer Review. I think that folks would be very interested in adding your article to the Guide.

There is another organization called Wikipedia that is a project similar to h2g2 that has entries that are more recondite and match their respective fields' writing styles. You might find it entertaining to write for them, too. They can discuss things there with Christian-Science-like thoroughness (think the Christian Science Monitor) so this option might or might not be as amusing to you as us-all.

Dear Sea:

Thank you again.

I'll see what I can do to make the article clearer with the aforementioned comments. You did see through my ploy of dumping a bunch of notes in lieu of a real article so you can claim to be the most meticulous reviewer if not the meanest. Don't dispair. You can still bear your wounds of pride with pride.

The Wikipedia is an interesting concept. I may pursue it after I figure out this site, if I ever do. But in the meantime, thanks for clueing me in.

&;D

I forget which beta version I'm on, but I edited the entry a little bit to make the guiding principle clearer. Please let me know if it worked and thanks for your help.

I didn't have any trouble understanding it, or at least following the concept of the piece. While I don't exactly know what some of the terms mean I think it is possible to figure out by the context they are used in. And if not there are links to resources to make them clearer.

Your Guide Entry has just been picked from Peer Review by one of our Scouts, and is now heading off into the Editorial Process, which ends with publication in the Edited Guide. We've therefore moved this Review Conversation out of Peer Review and to the entry itself.

If you'd like to know what happens now, check out the page on 'What Happens after your Entry has been Recommended?' at EditedGuide-Process. We hope this explains everything.

Thanks for contributing to the Edited Guide!

Thanks for making the Guide available for contributions.

Congratulations, Rita!

Thanks, you were instrumental in making it happen by cluing me into the process and how I was sort of taking shortcuts. I appreciate your help and you should share the congratulations with yourself.