Callan Bentley I was very impressed with Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air when I read it last summer. So recently, I decided to sample another of his books, this one a six-part microhistory about innovations that altered the course of human history. The six are: 1) cleanliness/hygiene (specifically in medicine and drinking water), 2) measurement of … Read more
Here’s a fascinating book that combines biology and chemistry with human health and ecological consciousness. Venomous: How Earth’s Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry is Christie Wilcox’s masterful account of all things that inject toxins into other creatures. The book covers how those toxins are produced, how evolution has modified them, how they get injected and what … Read more
For the third Friday in a row, “Mountain Beltway” features folds from Angel Island, in northern San Francisco Bay, California, This time, it’s meta-cherts on Perles Beach, showing impressive metamorphic recrystallization reactions.
A whole book about aquarium fish? Yes, it’s possible, when the fish is the Asian arowana. The subtitle of Emily Voigt’s The Dragon Behind the Glass is “A True Story of Power, Obsession, and the World’s Most Coveted Fish.” The arowana is a fish that can be found in the Amazon (sometimes called the ‘water … Read more
In 2009, a thief broke into England’s Tring Museum and stole hundreds of curated bird skins. The thief was a talented American musician attending school in London. He broke apart specimens collected by Alfred Russel Wallace and Lionel Walter Rothschild and sold the feathers to men who tie salmon flies (originally for fishing, but now an art form in its own right). The story of this crime is well documented by an author who became obsessed with solving the case of the missing birds.
Happy Friday, all. Here are a few shots of crinkled, thin, multicolored cherts from Kayak Beach on northern Angel Island, California, piggybacking on the folds I showed you last week.
The Friday fold is on the north shore of Angel Island, San Francisco Bay, showing blueschist-facies high-contrast metalliferous cherts with folds on many scales.
Here’s a cool little book about the paleobiology, ecology, and behavior of cephalopods: Squid Empire. The author, Danna Staaf, has a PhD in marine biology and –more importantly– a lifelong fascination with squid, octopuses, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. This work is a history of the cephalopod clade – going back into deep time, before the Cambrian … Read more
A book by Nick Pyenson (of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History) details the past, present, and future of whales. Combining paleontology, oceanography, environmental awareness, evolution, and history with personal stories of field work and insight, it’s a compelling tale of modern science on charismatic, mysterious creatures.
AGU’s Centennial year is also the 35th anniversary of the publication of Clyde Wahrhaftig’s unique field guide to the geology of San Francisco. A team of geologists is updating “A Streetcar to Subduction” for a modern digital audience, and recently did some California field work to visit key sites. Check out one of them here with the Friday fold, as we visit a plunging syncline in the Purisima Formation on the coast near San Mateo.
[Note: this book review was scheduled to run in the July 2019 issue of EARTH magazine, but with the announcement two weeks ago that EARTH was being shuttered, I was notified that nothing contributors or freelancers had written scheduled for after April 2019 would be published, and the rights were returned to me. While that’s … Read more
I’ve been fortunate lately to get to meet and interact with Phil Torres, independent scholar of existential risks. At my prompting, Phil came to a GSW meeting where Peter Brannen was talking about mass extinctions, and later he came to my class to talk to my Historical Geology students at NOVA about risks humanity faces. … Read more
Here’s a deceptive Friday “faux”ld I saw last week on the South Page Valley Road whilst learning about the Martinsburg Formation outcrops there: Looks like an isoclinal fold in this slab of siltstone, but the curvy lines are just concentric weathering rinds. Not a real fold at all! I hope everything you see this weekend … Read more
A book review of Paige Williams’ “The Dinosaur Artist,” a tale of international trade in dinosaur skeletons.
A virtual field trip to examine some deepwater clastic sediments shed off the first phase of Appalachian mountain building, and deformed in the third phase. It’s a lovely day for a field trip to the late Ordovician!
Friday is that special day of the week where we take a break from our hurried lives and gaze longingly at great photos of folded rocks in exotic corners of the world. Today, we return to Oman, and we say, “Oh, man!”
The Friday fold is a recumbent anticline/syncline pair, deforming the K/Pg boundary in the Swiss Alps, as photographed from the air by Bernhard Edmaier.
Near Antarctica, South Georgia Island is a good place to find glaciers and penguins. And, as it turns out: massive recumbent folds! Let’s take a look.
Because of my commute, I consume multiple books at the same time. I listen to one in the car, and I read another (or more than one other) at home, on traditional paper. This past week, I read Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton and listened to David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. I chose the Dickens … Read more
It’s the last day of the work week. Some photos of isoclinal syn-depositional folding in Sardinian tuff will get your Friday off on the right foot.