Friday fold: French Broad basement
The Friday fold visits the French Broad Massif of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge province.
blue ridge
Friday fold: Mars Hill terrane
Today’s Friday Fold comes to us via Pete Berquist of Thomas Nelson Community College in Hampton, Virginia. Check it out: Pete explains what’s going on here: I cannot provide an exact location but this is within the Mars Hill Terrane (MHT), which is an distinctive swath of Mesoproterzoic basement extending ~50 km x 100 km … Read more
Animated laminae
More of the new scientific medium* I showed you on Wednesday: animated GIFs of super-small stuff, to give a sense of depth. This time, I included a 1 mm scale bar: These are laminations of silt and clay in the rhythmites of the lower Konnarock Formation. If the above image moves too fast for your … Read more
Reduction rims?
Another look at Konnarock Formation diamictite, showing colorful reaction “halos” around some clasts.
The Konnarock Formation
A detailed description of one of the Virginia Blue Ridge’s most intriguing geologic formations: a maroon sedimentary sequence showing the advance of “Snowball Earth” glaciers in the Neoproterozoic.
Drilling: what, why, and how
As mentioned, I spent a significant part of last weekend was spent on a paleomagnetic sampling project with collaborators from the University of Michigan. On Friday, this was our field area: That’s the south slopes of Old Rag Mountain, a popular Blue Ridge hiking destination because unlike many Virginia peaks, when you get to the … Read more
Scenes from a drill campaign
The past couple of days, I’ve been in the field, collecting samples with Dr. Fatim Hankard, a post-doctoral researcher from the University of Michigan, and Matt Domeier, a PhD candidate from that same fine school. We’re interested in using Virginia’s wealth of Catoctin formation feeder dikes to do paleomagnetism measurements that might help us constrain … Read more
Harpers Foldry
Cleaning out the backlog of photos I haven’t popped up here yet… Here’s three shots from last weekend, of folds (some kinky) which deform Harpers Formation foliation, just south of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: The Harpers is a Cambrian-aged lagoonal mudrock, dated via Olenellus trilobites in Pennsylvania. It is part of a transgressive sequence that … Read more
Overturned bedding at Maryland Heights
The Lilster & I drove out to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, today, and crossed the Potomac River to hike up to the overlook at “Maryland Heights,” which is what they call the Blue Ridge north of the river. On the way uphill, I noticed this nice example of Harpers Formation bedding and cleavage dipping in … Read more
"Geology of Skyline Drive" w/JMU
I mentioned going out in the field last Thursday with Liz Johnson‘s “Geology of Skyline Drive” lab course at James Madison University. We started the trip south of Elkton, Virginia, at an exposure where Liz had the students collect hand samples and sketch their key features. Here’s one that I picked up: Regular readers will … Read more