Rarified Rocks, Part II

Bedded 'paleosoils'—fossilized soils from a much warmer and volcanically active period in central Oregon, at the Painted Hills unit of the John Day Fossil beds near Mitchell, OR Basalt is the most common rock form on the surface of the Earth. (And the moon for that matter.} It's as abundant as it is relentless and because it arises, en mas…