Geology in Pop Culture - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

 Geology in Pop Culture: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

When I started preparing my talk for the 2023 annual Geological Society of America conference (Finding Hidden Geological Lessons in the Media Around Us), I knew that I wanted to talk about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It is a movie that had been on my radar to write about for many years and I figured it would be a fairly easy one to throw into the talk. However, when I started to do my regular research into it, fascinating things started to pop up and I figured as part of my talk, I would give the audience a walk through of my process. And that is what I will do here as well....

When we first are introduced to the eponymous dwarfs of the movie, we discover them as workers in a mine. 

The dwarfs working in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

And it turns out they have vocal talent as well, but that's besides the point. To start my research I needed to verify what it was that they were actually digging for. I assumed it was diamonds but I could not recall if it was ever stated as such.  

As the lyrics of their song state: "where a million diamonds shine". So clearly this is a diamond mine, as I was led to believe. 

From here there are several avenues that one can take while looking at this. I first wanted to confirm my suspicions, not just about the diamonds, which we just did, but also about the placement of the story. Another assumption of mine that I wanted to confirm, was whether Snow White was German. The story was written by the German writing pair, the Brothers Grimm, in 1812 as Sneewittchen, indicating that she was likely German. And while this doesn't mean that the Disney version of the character is also German, you can currently meet Snow White in Germany at EPCOT, pretty much confirming that Snow White is German (at least in the eyes of Disney).

Step 1: The original inspiration

But let us bring this back even further. What was the original inspiration for the character. Was she actually German? Did she live in a mining town? And if she did, did they mine diamonds?

The True Story Behind Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs article from Curious Historian. 

It is thought that the real life inspiration to the character of Snow White was Margarete von Waldeck, born to a prominent family in Waldeck, Germany in 1533. Many aspects of her life line up with the fairy tale per the article, but the most important one was that the town of Waldeck was a mining town. The only problem was that the mine was a copper mine, not a diamond mine. And those are two very different things in geology. So although the mine might still have sparkled with the light reflecting off the metal deposits, it is not a diamond mine. 

So we move on. 

Step 2: The Source for Diamonds

Although the real life Snow White didn't live near a diamond mine, we still assume that the character of Snow White is German and lived near a German diamond mine, if such a thing exists. So let us look at real life diamond mine localities. 

There are several ways that diamonds can form, and therefore there are several different types of deposits that they can be found in, but by far the most common types of deposits are known as kimberlites. 

Kimberlite model. Image courtesy of the Kansas Geological Survey. 

Kimberlites are the result of magma from deep in the Earth's mantle that gets erupted on the surface in a rapid and violent type of eruption. Deep in the mantle is where the pressures are high enough for diamonds to form, which typically happens at 150 to 700 km deep in the Earth. The diamonds are then carried upwards in these kimberlite eruptions, where they can then be found on the surface of the Earth.

Global kimberlite localities. From Tappe et al., 2018.

 However, there is a problem when we look at the global distribution of kimberlite deposits.

Blow up of European kimberlite deposits. From Tappe et al., 2018.

There are no kimberlite deposits in mainland Europe. So unless Snow White was Scandinavian or Russian, we are at a dead-end here as well.

Step 3: Alternative Diamond Sources

And this is where the story takes an interesting turn. During my research for diamonds in Germany, I did come across one fascinating story. It turns out that 15 million years ago the town of Nördlingen, Germany was struck by a meteorite. 

Norlingen, Germany. Image courtesy of The Travel.

Known as the Nördlinger Ries impact crater, the asteroid that struck the Earth was going at least 70,000 km/h forming an impact crater 25 km across and 500 m deep. When meteorites strike the surface of the Earth, they do so with tremendous speed, creating very high pressures. The pressures produced from this impact were large enough that they could potentially create diamonds, if the rock they are impacting has the proper carbon concentration (carbon being the element that diamonds are made out of). 

The Nördlinger Ries impact crater. Image courtesy of Digital Geology. 

The rocks in the area of Nördlingen were mostly sedimentary rocks (limestones, shales, and sandstones) however there is also a significant amount of graphite-bearing gneissic rocks. Graphite is another mineral that is entirely made up of carbon and is often the source mineral for artificial diamond creations. The impact of the Nördlinger Ries meteorite was then able to transformed the graphite in these source rocks into tons and tons of microscopic diamonds. 

Article highlighting all of the diamonds from the Nordlingen impact. Image courtesy of The Travel. 

On average the diamonds produced from the impact were less than 0.2 mm, however the total amount of diamonds is estimated to be 72,000 tons! That's a lot of diamonds. So it is my theory that Snow White and the seven dwarfs lived near the Nördlingen impact crater and mined the diamonds from a meteorite impact. 

References

https://www.blackpoolgrand.co.uk/history-of-snow-white

https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/entertainment/epcot/character-meet-snow-white/

https://curioushistorian.com/the-true-story-behind-snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarfs/2

Tappe, Sebastian, et al. "Geodynamics of kimberlites on a cooling Earth: Clues to plate tectonic evolution and deep volatile cycles." Earth and Planetary Science Letters 484 (2018): 1-14.

https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/summer-2019-kimberlites-earths-diamond-delivery-system

https://www.thetravel.com/what-to-know-about-nordlingen-in-germany-and-its-meteorite-diamonds/

https://digitalgeology.de/en/nordlinger-ries-impact-crater

Schmitt, R. T., et al. Distribution and origin of impact diamonds in the Ries crater, Germany. Vol. 384. Geological Society of America, 2005.

Geology in Pop Culture - The Rescuers Down Under

 Geology in Pop Culture

Released in 1990, The Rescuers Down Under continues the escapades started in 1977's The Rescuers. However, in this adventure our favorite mice, Bernard and Bianca, travel down to the Australian outback (not the steakhouse). Here, they find that the villain of the story, the poacher Percival C. McLeach has kidnapped a boy, Cody, while hiding out in some abandoned opal mines.

 

So what exactly is opal anyway?

Different types of Australian opal varieties. Image courtesy of BlackOpal Direct. 

Opal (SiO2.H2O) is a mineral that forms from the packed spheres of silica (SiO2), also known as the mineral quartz. Opal is a hydrated form of silica where water has been shown to include between 3 and 9% of the total mineral structure. Unlike many minerals, because of how it is formed, opal is amorphous, or without form. This means that there is no crystal structure or cleavage that is seen in most other minerals. Opal forms through the processes of solidification of gelatinous or liquid silica within cracks and voids of other rocks. 

Since the opals are created by spheres of silica and water, the size of the sphere's dictates the colors that are produced. These colors are refracted through the opal like a prism, with larger spheres yielding red or orange, and smaller ones radiating blue. However, this is only the case with precious opals, the more gem quality ones. Most opals, ~95%, are referred to as common opals. These are opals that do not have the "play-of-color" expected in opals as seen in the image above. Although still beautiful, they are harder to identify than the precious opals. 

Location of Australian Opal Mines. Image courtesy of Opals Down Under. 

Despite being found around the world, it turns out that ~95% of the world's supply of precious opals comes from Australia. The opals started to form during the Cretaceous period when there was a large inland sea across Australia. During this time silica rich sands were deposited along the shorelines, then 30 million years ago, during the Tertiary, deep weathering of these sediments within the Australian Artesian Basin released large amounts of soluble silica into the groundwater. This silica traveled into the cracks and fissures in the Cretaceous age rocks where it was stopped by an impermeable layer below. Staying in the cracks and fissures, the opal deposits formed veins, often trapping fossils that also happen to be in the sedimentary rocks such as leaves, dinosaurs, small mammals, and marine reptiles such as Eric the Pliosaur. 

Eric the opalized pliosaur. Image courtesy of Opal Auctions. 

Most of the opal mines in Australia are a type known as open-cut. This means that they basically dig down to the source of the deposit, in this case opal, and clear out anything above it, forming a quarry or pit. This limits the dangers of enclosed mine spaces, allows you to find smaller deposits easier, is much faster with heavy machinery, but is also much, MUCH, more damaging to the environment, destroying literally everything to get to the deposits. 

In The Rescuers Down Under though, they are clearly not in an open-cut mine, they are underground mines. There are some underground opal mines that are found within Australia. One of these locations is the town of Mintabie, found near the north-central portion of the South Australian state. And although they did use open-pit mining in Mintabie, they also had quite a number of underground mines as seen in the picture below.

Mintabie Opal Mines. Image courtesy of Opal Auctions. 

What makes Mintabie interesting is that the mining heyday here was in the 1980's. Even though opals had been know from here since the 1920's, production increased starting in 1976 with the addition of mining equipment able to break through the hard sandstone. During the 1980's, production here was the largest in all of Australia with a peak during 1988. However, after 1988, production quickly declined resulting in lots of abandoned opal mines. 

Warning sign in The Rescuers Down Under

This timing of the opal mines being abandoned during the late 1980's correlates strongly with The Rescuers Down Under, which would have been starting to be in production probably ~1988. Seeing these abandoned opal mines pop up all over the place would have been a good impetus to a setting for their movie. 

References
https://blackopaldirect.com/opal-types/

https://www.opal.academy/opal-basics

https://www.opalsdownunder.com.au/learn/what-is-opal/

https://jasonree.com.au/blogs/news/why-are-australian-opals-so-expensive

https://www.opalsdownunder.com.au/learn/australian-opal-mining-fields/

https://www.opalsdownunder.com.au/learn/how-is-opal-formed/

https://www.ga.gov.au/education/minerals-energy/australian-mineral-facts/opal

https://www.nationalopal.com/opals/precious-opal-formation.html

https://www.opalauctions.com/learn/opal-information/eric-the-opalized-pliosaur

https://www.opalauctions.com/learn/news/mintabie-town-to-close

https://www.uniqueopals.ch/opal-origin.htm

Dinos in Pop Culture - Magic Kingdom's Maleficent Dragon

 

For my final Dinos of Disney post (for now), we look at what is not a direct dinosaur, but possibly the evolution of dinosaurs' influence on medieval cultures over time, and that is the dragon! 

I had talked about it before but there is evidence that dinosaur bones possibly led people to create dragons over time. And as time continued these dragons have evolved within our culture just as animals evolve in nature until we are left with the remnants of that evolution. So, for that reason, I like to treat dragons as if they are the descendants of dinosaurs. And with that I present the dragon of Magic Kingdom: Maleficent.

Premiering in 1959's Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent was the primary villain of the movie appearing in human form for most of the movie until the climax at the end where she transmogrifies into the dragon. This particular dragon was part of one of the many parades that had gone by when we were there in January of 2020. 

The parade float is from the Festival of Fantasy parade and the dragon itself was actually mobile and spit fire out of its mouth. 

Maleficent in her dragon form from the original Sleeping Beauty.

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.

Paleo in Pop Culture - Hollywood Studios' Galaxy's Edge

 

Although not dinosaur related, there is another strong paleontological connection in Hollywood Studios and that involves the entire backdrop of the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge land within the park. 

The entire park of Galaxy's Edge takes place within the canon of Star Wars on a planet named Batuu. This settlement on Batuu is known as Black Spire Outpost, named after the spires located throughout the backdrop and within the park itself, specifically one spire in particular that is blacker than the other spires. Here is the blurb from starwars.com:

"Widely known for the petrified remains of its once towering ancient trees, the spires now stand guard across the river valleys and plains and have long captured the imagination of travelers to this planet."

In canon, these spires are petrified trees that were petrified in place, where the tops of the trees were not preserved (either they eroded away over time or only the bottoms were petrified and the tops decayed before preservation). Petrification is a specific type of fossilization that refers to trees. This process involves the replacement of each living/biological molecule with mineral molecules. 

The replacement process, or permineralization, occurs when minerals dissolved in water, frequently silica in the instance of petrification, flow through the water and do a (typically) 1-to-1 replacement of the molecules leaving behind a nearly perfect replica of the tree. These petrified trees no longer contain living (or dead) tissue but are essentially tree shaped rocks. For this process to occur though, the trees need to be buried, or at least submerged, in silica rich waters. It is also helpful if there is a lack of oxygen, because without oxygen the trees can't decay. For this to have occurred with all of these trees still standing upright, the entire region would need to have been buried or flooded with anoxic (lack of oxygen) waters or sediment (mud). 

The inspiration for these petrified trees came from a National Park within northeast Arizona, Petrified Forest National Park, where one can actually go see real life petrified trees. The difference here is that although the trees in Petrified Forest are huge, they are nowhere near as big as the ones in Black Spire Outpost, and also most, if not all, of the trees in Petrified Forest are preserved after they had fallen over.

Here are some of the lovely petrified trees from Petrified Forest National Park. I had done a post about the geology of Petrified Forest a little while ago and contains some more pictures and information after the fossilization process.

A close up of an actual petrified log from Petrified Forest National Park.

Back to Black Spire Outpost.

Here is a close up shot of one of the petrified stumps that really looks a lot like a petrified log. The artisans at the park spent a lot of time crafting each spire individually so that they not only looked like trees, but petrified trees, and each unique so they don't look cookie cutter. 

Here are some more spires off in the distance. These petrified tree spires also share a relative in Disney's California Adventure with the petrified Millennium Tree on the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail.

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.

Dinos in Pop Culture - Hollywood Studios' Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream of Extinction

 

Perhaps what is the most notable dinosaur in Hollywood Studios is the large Brontosaurus sitting in Echo Lake near the main open area after walking through the entrance shops. This dinosaur has been here since the park opened as MGM Studios back in 1989. The dinosaur houses a soft-serve ice cream shop called Dinosaur Gertie's Ice Cream of Extinction. 

Here is a shot of the dinosaur during January's Marathon Weekend with the dinos Christmas decor still on. Despite seeing this dinosaur every time I entered the park though, it wasn't until an episode of Drawn: The Story of Animation by Holly Frey that I realized the origins of the dinosaur. 

MGM Studios was essentially built as a working backlot studio as well as an homage to the movie industry with Grauman's Chinese Theater a central landmark within the park and The Great Movie Ride and the Studio Backlot Tour playing prominent opening ride roles. So, it is not surprising that the dinosaur in the lake has a theatrical history. 

On top of that, the designs around the Echo Lake region of the park were set to mimic the "Hollywood Crazy" form of architecture from Hollywood's Golden Age including weird structures such as the roadside dinosaur attractions that can still be seen in various locations across the US. When it came up, the dinosaur they built was actually modeled off of one of the earliest forms of animation that ever premiered. 

Created in 1914 by Winsor McCay, the cartoon is one of a dinosaur named Gertie. The dinosaur, a Brontosaurus, was created as a vaudeville act where McCay interacts with the dinosaur telling it what to do like a trained elephant. This animation of Gertie is one of the earliest forms of animation ever created and the earliest to feature a dinosaur. The cartoon is also one of the most influential animations ever having influenced the likes of people like Walt Disney, who started creating animation shortly after in the early 1920's. 

Here is the full version of the Gertie cartoon on YouTube:

Apparently, this ice cream shop also lived up to its name of "Ice Cream of Extinction" where it served rare types of ice cream from around the world. However, now a days it is only a soft-serve shop. 

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.

Dinos in Pop Culture - Hollywood Studios' Rex the T. rex

 

Moving on to Hollywood Studios, where there are a couple instances of Dinosaurs of Disney. The first one I will cover was introduced to us way back in 1995. That is of course Toy Story's Rex the T. rex. 

With the opening of Toy Story Land, specifically the Slinky Dog Dash, in 2018, we had the wealth of opportunities to highlight one of the most prominent dinosaurs in the Disney lexicon outside of Aladar from the DINOSAUR movie. We visited Hollywood Studios during early January of 2020 and Rex still had his holiday reindeer antlers on at the time. 

When you start off the Slinky Dog Dash, you pass by the box from which Rex came from. This box proves that despite the three fingers (of which T. rex only has two), that Rex is definitively considered a Tyrannosaurus rex, at least in Toy Story canon. 

The stats on the side of the box for Rex are:

• Tyrannosaurus means "Tyrant Lizard" in Ancient Greek, and Rex means "King" in Latin
• The most feared dinosaur of the Cretaceous Period
• One of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs with an enormous jaw and extremely small forearms

Also Available from Borealis:

Triceratops • Parasaurolophus

These stats are amazingly all correct (ignoring the hyperbolic comment about "most feared" and the capitalization of "Rex") and completely not out of place as the writing on the side of a toy box.  

The box also indicates that there are other dinosaur toys from the made up Borealis company including a Triceratops, whom, although I didn't see any indication of her in the park itself, we have seen in the Toy Story movies by the name of Trixie.

Looking up the origin of Rex. It turns out that he was modeled after the T. rex toy from the Dino-Riders cartoon series from back in the late 1980's.

Here is the T. rex from the first episode of Dino-Riders, which you can actually watch on YouTube. 

And the toy that got made for the T. rex, (courtesy of @toysthatmadeus on Twitter)

Interestingly enough, as I mentioned Rex has 3 fingers (created in 1995), which are quite clearly seen on the side of the box. However, looking at the source dinosaur from 1988's Dino-Riders, both the cartoon and the toy T. rex have only the correct number of fingers, two. 

There are a lot of features on a toy T. rex that can be fudged for play factor and still it would give the impression that it is a T. rex, even if it doesn't 100% look like one (hence the more archaic upright stance of the figure versus the Jurassic Park version of the T. rex with it's more laid out stance) but the number of fingers is a simple one people frequently make wrong that is an obvious mistake when made. 

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.

Dinos in Pop Culture - Animal Kingdom: Miscellaneous DinoLand U.S.A.

And for the last part of Animal Kingdom, we are going to look at many of the miscellaneous dinosaurs around DinoLand U.S.A.:

The entrance sign to DinoLand U.S.A. which features the Brachiosaurus from The Boneyard. 

Right next door to Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama! is Chester and Hester's Dinosaur Treasures store. Here we are looking at the front of the store and neighboring Dino-Rama!.

On the way to the store we have this random billboard, which is likely being used as a photopass backdrop.

And then there is this thing that has always fascinated me. This "thing" is also reminiscent of the Crystal Palace Iguanodon (like the Dino Diner in Chester and Hester's Dino-Rama!) but far more gaudy than anything has a right to be. 

Front entrance to the store with the appropriate billboards for the authentic time period. 

Another billboard over the store advertising our imminent doom by asteroid.

Within the store we have a plethora of dinosaurs littered about. 

With tons hung up from the ceiling.

And out the back door of the store there are a few random dinosaurs to play on. Unfortunately, it was getting dark by this time and I couldn't really take pictures of them but I did manage to grab a shot of the Corythosaurus here.

 Another Dino Institute logo on an ice cream stand. 

 My favorite sign of the entire park right here for "Trilo-bites".

  Here is a random dino skull and hands next to the "Gargantuasarus World Tours" sign, of which the name "Gargantuasarus" is completely made up. The skull itself here is also indecipherable, with hints of T. rex mixed up in it.

You can find all of my Dinos of Disney compiled on my website at Dinojim.com.