Callan Bentley It’s another cold morning in the Fort Valley. To celebrate winter’s continuing grip, please enjoy these images from last Friday morning, on my way to work… Frost on plants: Frost on barbed wire: Finally, here’s a time-lapse video (5 times actual speed) of the first 6 miles of my commute (walking, then driving): [vimeo=http://vimeo.com/85285064]
Reader Eric Fulmer contributed this week’s Friday fold. It’s a beauty! Eric writes that this outcrop is from “the Belgian Ardennes near Durbuy. There’s a well-exposed anticline along the Ourthe River. The stone is late-Devonian limestone typical of the immediate area that was later deformed regionally due to the Variscan orogeny. The Ardennes are classic … Read more
I was first alerted to the proposal of a new bill in the Virginia House of Delegates last Wednesday by a colleague at James Madison University, Eric Pyle. Eric and I serve as state Councilors for the state of Virginia in the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. As such, we are sincerely concerned about any … Read more
A photo of the iconic dune cross-beds at Zion National Park gets the Bentley Annotation treatment, and comes out looking like a stained glass window. Take a look at both photos and see if you can answer the question, “Which way was the wind blowing?”
Another guest Friday fold – again, from the structural geologist Christie Rowe at McGill University in Montreal: Christie describes this as: growth faulting in beautiful fluvial sediments… Accordingly, I have squinted and annotated it a bit: Happy Friday!
While at the University of Texas at Austin, where the Jackson School of Geosciences was hosting the Summit on the Future of Geoscience Education this past weekend, I was impressed to see a well-developed rock garden outside the student center. Here’s an example of a stretched-pebble conglomerate from that garden: Note the nice epidote boudins … Read more
While at the University of Texas at Austin, where the Jackson School of Geosciences was hosting the Summit on the Future of Geoscience Education this past weekend, I was impressed to see a well-developed rock garden outside the student center. Here are three boulder-sized samples of folds from that garden. Enjoy! Jackson School of Geosciences … Read more
While at the University of Texas at Austin, where the Jackson School of Geosciences was hosting the Summit on the Future of Geoscience Education this past weekend, I was very impressed with the backdrop behind the main desk at the student center. It showed lovely meso- and macro- scale folds, and exquisite boudinage. I never … Read more
While at the University of Texas at Austin, where the Jackson School of Geosciences was hosting the Summit on the Future of Geoscience Education this past weekend, my friend and colleague Pete Berquist snapped this image of a stretched pebble conglomerate in the structure teaching lab: Some nice examples of pressure solution evidence in there … Read more
Another guest submission for the Friday fold. This one comes to us from Christie Rowe, and it shows a tiny kink fold in the Bitter Ridge formation (playa limestones):
Some ice seen this morning, the coldest we’ve yet experienced at our home in the Fort Valley… 4° F when we got up this morning, with windchill around -15° F. Frost nucleated on a “petal” from a tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera): Frost on grass (note the different habit of the ice crystals here): Frost on … Read more
Please. Please. Please. Please stop conflating weather and climate. It is cold today, yes, and that’s a big deal. But it doesn’t influence any scientific conclusion about climate change, one way or the other. Today’s cold temperatures are a weather event. It’s distinctive, but short-lived. Climate is a long-term trend: many years of weather events. … Read more
My former student Aaron Barth sent me a few photos of disharmonic folding in metamorphic rocks in Ireland for a guest Friday fold…. Awesome! Thanks Aaron!
Here’s our birding yard list (species seen in/from our yard) for the past year. You can compare it with 2012’s list here. Canada geese Goldfinch Tufted titmouse Dark-eyed junco Mourning dove Black-capped chickadee White-breasted nuthatch Downy woodpecker Hairy woodpecker Blue jay Brown creeper American crow Red-bellied woodpecker Pileated woodpecker Red-shouldered hawk Carolina wren Turkey vulture … Read more
Asbestiform ice is growing in our yard this week, with individual ice needles several inches long… Note the substantial pebbles that have been lifted up by the growth of these things – they’re powerful little crystals.
I’m branching out with my macro”bugs” here – using the term sensu lato, to include all creepy-crawlies. Here’s a night crawler (Lumbricus terrestris), a non-native species of earthworm, that somehow found its way into our basement during a rainy period in late summer… He/she (worms are hermaphrodites) is long! I was astonished with a lengthy … Read more
I ran out of folds last week, so earlier this week, I asked for help on Twitter. Laura Hamilton responded with a link to this image: @callanbentley El Gordo, S Spain. Huge turbidite block! Folded over as it moved over the seafloor 🙂 pic.twitter.com/L4INxmtLTq — lau.rah (@hammijam) December 23, 2013 Sweet. And you can’t complain … Read more
On a cold winter’s day, Callan harks back to a summer’s afternoon fossilizing in the Rocky Mountains. A few choice images of Mississippian-aged marine invertebrates are shared.
On my morning walk earlier in the month, I encountered this trackway: Those are percheron (big breed of horse) hoof-prints, and the tracks of an authentic one-horse open sleigh, like the one invoked in “Jingle Bells!” Our neighbor, Don Warlick of Secret Passage Ranch, brings the sleigh out for neighborhood fun when conditions are right… … Read more