2017 Luminary Series – Carol Hill

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An initial fascination with Mammoth Cave catalyzed Carol Hill’s passion for cave geology, along with the speleothems that decorate the underground world. Later, when studying a waxy mineral that she had observed in Carlsbad and in other Guadalupe caves, Carol learned that this material originated in low-pH, sulfuric-acid conditions. Subsequent sulfur isotope analysis provided additional evidence that Guadalupe caves in the Capitan Reef owed their speleogenesis to a sulfuric acid mechanism. Carol Hill’s mineralogy studies in Mammoth and in Carlsbad provided the main impetus for her to write Cave Minerals of the World. This book is populated with fantastic color photographs of incredible minerals and speleothems. Carol has explained that one of her hopes for the Cave Minerals series is that it will stimulate scientific interest in cave mineralogy, illustrate the beauty that lies in the subterranean world, and convince even the layperson that the underground wilderness is precious and irreplaceable.

2017 Luminary Series – Carol Hill

June 1, 2017

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