More images for you today from my field trip a few weeks ago to West Virginia’s bizarro highway Corridor H, a quiet place built for roaring traffic. Its multistory roadcuts are fresh and profound; they offer the most incredible views into the mid-to-late-Paleozoic surface of Earth… and the creatures that lived there. In the Devonian … Read more
I went out last Tuesday to Corridor H, the exemplary new highway cutting through the Valley and Ridge province of eastern West Virginia. Joining me was former student Alan Pitts, a devotee of Corridor H from way back in the early days when we just called it “New Route 55.” The boondoggle highway is now … Read more
In April, I posted some images of an odd structure from some of the fossiliferous siltstones of the Fort Valley. Some of the commenters suggested it was no fossil, but simply a very small scale version of soft-sediment deformation. Now, another “Fortian” has shown me another example, and this one is better preserved. Its lobes … Read more
Found this small, flat brachiopod fossil last fall just down the road from my place in the Fort Valley. Lovely little thing… That’s all I’ve got for you today!
Yesterday we examined primary sedimentary structures (including trace fossils) at an outcrop of Devonian-aged Brallier Formation turbidites between Deerfield and West Augusta, Virginia. Today, we’ll zoom in on the tectonic structures at the site: folds, faults, and joints. Remember, you don’t have to take my word for it. You can explore it for yourself in … Read more
Last week, I mentioned some geologizing with the family in the Staunton area. The furthest west we ventured was to the road connecting Deerfield, Virginia, with West Augusta. There, the Brallier Formation is well exposed in a dramatic roadcut. Explore it for yourself in this M.A.G.I.C. GigaPan: link The Brallier is turbidites, shed off the … Read more
A Fort Valley neighbor brought me this sample yesterday, asking me to tell her what it was. But while my brain’s pattern-recognition centers lit up when examining its “rows” of scale-like bumps, it didn’t match up with anything that I know from anywhere else here. Take a look, and click any of these images to … Read more
On Duck Creek (Ellendale, NC quadrangle), you can see folded xenoliths within the Toluca Granite (383 Ma, 378 Ma, or 368 Ma, depending on which mineral you ask). The granite there contains xenoliths that contain pre-exisiting fabrics and structures, and we stopped at Duck Creek on the pre-GSA-Charlotte field trip I took to the Neoacadian … Read more
The Friday fold comes from a stop on the “Neoacadian Inner Piedmont” field trip that Callan attended prior to the GSA meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week.
Today, I’ve got a batch of additional photos of the Walker Top Granite to share, variably mylonitized (sheared out under ductile conditions)… Nice garnets in some spots: Delta porphyroclast: Lovely sheared-out rocks…
Here’s one of the cool rocks I saw on my pre-GSA-Charlotte field trip to the Neoacadian Inner Piedmont field trip: the protomylonitic Walker Top Granite (~366 Ma crystallization), which was deformed as the terrane it was intruded into got shoved up and to the west (and perhaps the southwest!). Here’s an animated GIF I made … Read more
A weekend expedition to GigaPan the C&O Canal’s singular Paw Paw Tunnel results in an exposition on Devonian sedimentation, Alleghanian mountain-building, structural geology, and the incision of the Potomac River to produce entrenched meanders.
Callan’s Canadian Rockies field course visits an outcrop of Cambrian slate in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. Folded and boudinaged carbonatite dikes are seen.
A sketch of the Massanutten Synclinorium is presented, made with a Wacom Cintiq stylus/monitor combination.
Callan and his wife hike Cory Pass in Banff National Park, Canada, and encounter some geology, some solitude, and a spectacular landscape.
The Friday fold is a contribution from the Massachusetts Geological Survey. It shows a migmatite with lovely structure. An upcoming (free) field trip to this location will be part of the 2012 Structural Geology and Tectonics Forum: an event readers may be interested in attending
Hand sample of folded limestone strata in West Virginia (presumably Devonian in age). Note the rip-up clasts and large grain size at the base of the sample (to the right in the photo). Note the fine-grained, thin-bedded shale laminations towards the top (left) of the sample, too. Together, they tell a story of decreasing energy … Read more
From the road that keeps on giving: new New Route 55, in West Virginia, west of Moorefield.
This beastie lives in an old quarry in West Virginia, along old Route 55. And from a slightly different perspective… This fold is in Devonian limestones of the Helderberg Group, kinked up probably during the Alleghanian Orogeny (the assembly of Pangea) in the late Paleozoic.
Today, two examples of outcrops that reveal an overprinting relationship between metamorphic cleavage and sedimentary bedding. Both are Devonian in depositional age, from the new stretch of New Route 55 in West Virginia, west of Moorefield. The first is from limestones of the Helderberg Group, and the second is from shale of the Brallier Formation. … Read more