Friday fold: Kinked Lynchburg metasediments near a soapstone body
Happy Friday! Here are some kink-folded metasediments from Virginia’s Lynchburg Group to help usher in the weekend.
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
On his way to get his COVID vaccine, Callan visits a new outcrop showing folded and faulted strata of the Neoproterozoic Lynchburg Group.
TGIF! That’s my seven year old field assistant showing off the shape of a syncline in shale, siltstone, and fine sandstone of the Foreknobs Formation, a Devonian nearshore package of clastic sediment in the Valley & Ridge Province of eastern West Virginia. Want to see something freaky for Halloween? Photoshop can make it happen: Ewwww. … Read more
Here is an outcrop of folded limestone along route 430 in Newfoundland, inside Gros Morne National Park, just west of the crossroads called Wiltondale: A detailed look at the left antiformal portion of the outcrop: A zoomed-in examination of the rightmost part, where a goopy looking synform resides: Just down the way, a second outcrop … Read more
Traveling in Newfoundland, Callan visits a seaside outcrop showing a Proterozoic submarine slump complex, overprinted by tectonic cleavage and weathered by the sea.
Last weekend was the annual meeting of the eastern section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. On Friday afternoon, we visited Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and my colleague Beth Doyle led a great field trip to examine the rocks exposed there. This was my favorite outcrop we saw: Here is a close up of … Read more
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!
A Friday fold from Germany showing an overturned sequence of sedimentary layers. Bedding / cleavage relationships show which limb is tectonically inverted. Furthermore, this fold was an “Aha!” moment for the budding geological mind of a small boy.
A reader asks: “What is foliation and what makes it so important to the structure of rock?”
Callan answers with a lot of images of beautifully foliated rocks.