My thesis project is fairly simple. It is the mesozoic geology of the Puerto Ingenerio Ibáñez area, Aysén Region, Chilean Patagonia, 46 degrees south. This means that I went there and spent thirteen months mapping all of the geology in an area in the Patagonian Andes that hadn’t been mapped before.
The project is essentially the description of the complete geological history of that area — from the Jurassic Period, one hundred and fifty million years ago, to the present day. The area is about three hundred and fifty square kilometres, and I’ve been within about five hundred metres of every rock there. I mapped them all, found their positions, and took samples of the ones that were worth sampling.