Friday fold: Opal Range, Alberta

Howard Allen is the Friday folder who keeps on giving… Here’s his latest: Multiple folds at top of ridge, Opal Range, Alberta. Photographed from Kananaskis Highway 40, looking SE. Beds are Carboniferous carbonates, probably Mount Head and/or Etherington formations. There are lots of great folds to be seen along that road. The Kananaskis Trail is … Read more

Friday fold: subglacial drag fold (Pleistocene) in Cretaceous sediments, Alberta

Howard Allen, a retired petroleum geologist from Calgary, and longtime reader of this blog, contributed this week’s Friday fold: Subglacial drag fold (Pleistocene) in Upper Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Fm. bedrock (sandstone, shale). The locality is SE of Drumheller, AB at UTM 12U 394247 5692469 (WGS84). Did you hear that right? Yes, you did: This is … Read more

Friday fold: Flow banding in obsidian, Newberry Volcano National Monument, Oregon

Lockwood Dewitt is the purveyor of this week’s Friday fold ensemble: All these folds are primary (not tectonic) in nature: they are flow banding of the viscous lava that oozed out to make the Big Obsidian Flow at Newberry. And closer in: One more: Awesome stuff! Thanks for sharing, Lockwood! Happy Friday, everyone!

Liesegang banding in Pennsylvanian sandstones, Bolt Mountain, West Virginia

While out at the eastern section of NAGT’s annual meeting last weekend in West Virginia, I participated in a field trip to look at the stratigraphy of the Bolt Mountain section of Pottsville Group strata. One thing that was particularly eye-catching about the sandstones we saw was that many of them had been stained by … Read more

Early Paleozoic fossils in Nealmont Formation, Germany Valley, West Virginia

Looking at Ordovician carbonates in Germany Valley, West Virginia, a few weeks ago on Rick Diecchio’s GMU sedimentology and stratigraphy course field trip: Lots and lots of brachiopods… Crinoid columnals mized with brachiopods: A set of coarsely-infilled trace fossils: Crinoid stem: Nice strophomenid brachiopod: Bryozoan? Receptaculid?

Fault breccia in Beekmantown limestone

Here’s another sight at the Eocene dikes site in Bluegrass Valley, Virginia, mentioned yesterday: That’s a gorgeous fault breccia, emplaced parallel to bedding, and parallel to the felsic dike (which can be found a few feet to the west / right of these photos): It was very poorly lithified, shockingly crumbly to the touch, considering … Read more

Spring time

This past weekend, I had a chance to visit Bath, Highland, and Alleghany Counties, Virginia, three amazingly beautiful places I had never before seen. I was tagging along on my colleague Rick Diecchio’s annual sedimentology & stratigraphy field trip for George Mason University. I was eager to learn from some awesome field sites from him … Read more

Exploring Mahantango Zoophycos traces in GigaPan

Recently, I posted about an excellent road cut in Fort Valley showing well-developed 10 cm+ Zoophycos trace fossils. Presented here are three new GigaPan images (two outcrop; one macro) of Zoophycos from the Devonian-aged Mahantango Formation: link link link These images are part of a new “virtual field trip” that I organized to supplement my … Read more