Our Upcoming Speaker
Note: Since October 2022, we have returned to in-person meetings at the Lodge at the Birmingham Zoo using a hybrid Zoom-In Person format with Zoom links sent by email to members and guests monthly. 

 

Title: Stories from the Roadside Geology of Alabama

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Speaker: Dr. Mark Steltenpohl, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geosciences at Auburn University

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Abstract: What do the following three things have in common? A bloated dinosaur carcass, a five-mile-wide meteor crater, and African fossils. Find out when the authors of the Roadside Geology of Alabama tell their favorite stories of their home state’s geologic past. 

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About the Authors: 

Mark Steltenpohl is an emeritus professor at Auburn University with more than forty years of experience as a field geologist. His interests in Alabama geology began while earning his BS and MS degrees at the University of Alabama. After getting his doctorate from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, he worked as a field geologist for three years at the Geological Survey of Alabama. Then he was hired by Auburn University, where he was a professor for thirty-two years, the final eight-years serving as department chair. His field research in Alabama, artic Scandinavia, Poland and East Greenland has focused on understanding the development of mountains through tectonic processes.

 

Laura Steltenpohl taught Earth Science, Chemistry and Physics twenty years at Auburn High School. She earned her MA in secondary science from the University of Alabama after getting degrees in geology at Vanderbilt University (BS) and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (MS). Her research focused on understanding the origin of alkaline granites using geochemical analyses. Her non-educational work experience includes five years as a project scientist with an environmental consulting firm.

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Mark and Laura live in Auburn, where they delight in being close to their daughter, Natalie, and granddaughter, Adelynn. Their son, Greg, is an alumn of the Auburn University Department of Geosciences and works in the environmental field in Louisville, Kentucky. They enjoy visiting him and exploring the natural beauty of landscapes developed over Paleozoic carbonates.

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Mark and Laura will also have copies of the book available for purchase, and for anyone who can’t attend but is interested in knowing where they are doing book signings, please refer to their author’s page: https://roadsiderocks.com/.  Their Facebook page is also Roadside Rocks.

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