Callan Bentley Beneath the Rising, by Premee Mohamed A novel of adventure, science fiction, and magic. Two teens from Canada embark on a mission to save the world. Though “mismatched” in terms of their demographics and wealth, they are united by the fact that they met as children when one terrorist’s bullet pierced them both. The story … Read more
Callan shares a few outcrops from coastal Maine, part of the Avalonia terrane that accreted to ancestral North America during the Acadian Orogeny. They are volcaniclastic rocks, coarse and fine, and showing both overprinting kink bands and cross-cutting basaltic dikes.
Five books get the Callan mini-review treatment: two novels from Amor Towles, an account of life in prison under solitary confinement, a history of Virginia slavery during the War of 1812, and finally a family account of the discovery of the fossil Hesperornis, a toothed bird, and various associated tangents.
Fresh from the field, Callan shares a quintet of beautifully preserved desiccation cracks in Mesoproterozoic Belt Supergroups sediments, exposed in Montana’s geological gem, Glacier National Park.
A quick Friday fold that I observed last month in a boulder of riprap at Chippokes State Park in Surry, Virginia. I have absolutely no idea where this rock was quarried; but it doesn’t look like anything I’m familiar with in Virginia, so maybe the Baltimore Mafic Complex??? Anyhow, it’s not native to the Coastal … Read more
Happy Friday! Here are some kink-folded metasediments from Virginia’s Lynchburg Group to help usher in the weekend.
One of my favorite tricks is using bedding / cleavage intersections to identify tectonically inverted strata. On a field trip yesterday to check out soapstone quarries in the Albemarle/Nelson border region, I got to see this lovely example of Lynchburg Group metasediments that showcased a textbook example of the phenomenon: Bedding was initially horizontal, or … Read more
The Lost Coast of northern California shows geological evidence of deep sea turbidity current sedimentation, tectonic accretion during Mesozoic subduction, and then isostatic uplift interacting with shoreline erosion. Check out a few photographs taken by Callan’s wife on a recent backpacking trip through the region.
On April 25th, it was announced that Elon Musk had arranged to buy the social media company Twitter. He had just attained majority shareholder status a few weeks earlier. I’ve been an avid Twitter user for twelve years, accruing 11.5K followers over that interval, and very much enjoying the conversation — but I decided to … Read more
Callan reviews the debut book by volcanologist Robin George Andrews. It details the diverse eruptive histories of Kilauea, Yellowstone, Ol Doinyo Lengai, the oceanic ridge system, our Moon, the planets Mars and Venus, and the cryovolcanoes of the outer solar system moons.
Underfoot: A Geologic Guide to the Appalachian Trail, by V. Collins Chew Published in 1988 by the Appalachian Trail Conference, this volume is a very AT-focused look at east coast geology. It’s also out of date, and a little hand-wringing when it comes to making clear conclusive statements about the arc of geologic history. The … Read more
A guest contribution for the Friday fold, from reader Christian Gronau: Christian reports that this is located on the North side of Hwy.11, 20 miles east of Saskatchewan River Crossing, Alberta. Eastern foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Faulting and folding in Early Cretaceous Luscar Group sediments. Typical repeating sequence of sandstone, siltstone and coal. … Read more
Callan reviews nine books in a big batch – some geoscience, some anthropology, some fiction, some natural history. Something for everyone!
Callan reviews a new book about endangered species and ecosystem recovery in various parts of Europe.
Katie Mack is the incoming Hawking Chair in Cosmology and Science Communication at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. She has written an excellent book about the end of the universe, The End of Everything. In it, she explains with wit and insight, four different ways the universe could die. I read it a year … Read more
Callan reviews a book which sets out to perform a comprehensive accounting of submerged lands through the lens of science, but also with an anthropological emphasis on memory and memory’s longer-lived but more flamboyant cousin, mythology.
It hasn’t been a good year for much, but I did get a lot of birding in. Traditionally, on new year’s day, I post my “yard list” from the previous year: a list of all the bird species I’ve personally observed from my yard. At my new house, I now have a full calendar year … Read more
Callan reviews Scottish author David Farrier’s nonfiction exploration of humanity’s signatures on the geologic record.
Happy Friday, all! Two shots today from my friend Joe up in Vermont. He sends these from the Champlain Valley, at a place called Raven’s Ridge. It looks like an alternating series of sandstones and shales, arched into an anticline, perhaps during the Acadian Orogeny (??). According to the Nature Conservancy’s website, porcupines live in … Read more
