The Gone Incognita podcast features audio versions of Gone Incognita blog posts. Episode 4 is based on: From the Archives: The Ghost of Mount Glossopteris, where you can also view the photograph of Bill Long discussed in the post.
William (“Bill”) Long had not yet begun a PhD when he accompanied the Byrd Traverse as a glaciologist in 1958. He’d “briefly” studied geology at Berkeley, which apparently meant a lot of “extracurricular rock climbing.”
Emil Schulthess writes of his photograph: “Bill appears in the fog like a ghost. His rucksack, full of geological finds, almost pulls him to the ground. Fred [Darling] is the last to arrive. Although they are utterly exhausted and at the end of their strength, they first of all spread out their treasures—fossilized snails and sea shells, parts of fossilized trees and imprints of leaves. They are of the utmost scientific importance, because they are proof of the existence of vegetation millions of years ago. Our friends only settle down to their well-earned rest after they have described in detail where every piece was found.”
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