Animals

Yesterday I went on an all-day off road ride in the dunes to the south of Gobabeb, going miles into the interior of the dunes where there are no roads and no people.  We got stuck a few times but dug ourselves out.

Today I did an experiment on 24 natural hypoliths (quartz rocks colonized by cyanobacteria) that showed that cyanobacteria can grow in light levels as low as 0.05% of direct sunlight.  As Chris McKay put it, "this shows they could grow on Pluto, if Pluto wasn't so cold."  I think this will get published in a scientific journal.

But, this is Africa and I know my audience.  Here are some animals:

Ostriches, Springbok and Gemsbok, respectively.  Below is a puff adder.  It was small, but Alacia was wearing flip-flops.

I leave Gobabeb tomorrow for California.  There probably won't be time for me to post to this blog tomorrow morning because I am going to climb a distant dune to watch the sun rise.  So, consider this my last post from Namibia.  I will sign off with some pictures of the NASA team chilling in the desert.