As I’ve mentioned previously, I spent some time making GigaPans this summer out west. Here’s Lily and me on the crest of the Bridger Range, enjoying the clear skies and great geology: When this portrait was taken (by our friend Lindsay), I was shooting this GigaPan: link Try exploring it to see if you can … Read more
The Friday fold returns to Canada this week, with a look at an internally crumpled mountain along Alberta’s Kananaskis Trail…
My NOVA colleague Shelley Jaye brought this gorgeous banded iron formation fold back from the Archean of Montana: Gorgeous to think about what this rock represents: (1) an anoxic atmosphere, a world where iron was able to dissolve in seawater; (2) some addition of oxygen, causing the iron to precipitate out as iron oxide minerals, … Read more
Today, a view to the southwest, from close to the hinge of the main anticline in the Sandy Hollow area, a classic geological field mapping locality in southern Montana: Triassic-aged Dinwoody Formation dominates the main part of the scene. Note how the strike and dip of the positively-weathering strata wrap around. Our Rockies students mapped … Read more
To this and this, add these: Some interesting fold shapes here. Bob Bauer, who took me to this site, interprets these as interference patterns, evidence of two generations of folding: Happy Friday – for me, there’s only a week of summer break left, and then a week from today, I’ll be back at work.
Two Z folds from the Proterozoic rocks of the Laramie Range, Wyoming – you get two since I’ve been so delinquent about blogging over the past month.
First sample of the summer – a new “pocket fold” showing Paleoproterozoic deformation in the northern Laramie Range, Wyoming.
The Friday fold series returns to Kootenay National Park in Canada for a look at some folded Cambrian limestones.
Two summers ago, my wife (then my very new wife) Lily and I participated in a two-week workshop for teachers on the energy resources of Wyoming. We also indulged in a visit to a mineral resource site: South Pass City, a site in the southern Wind River Uplift that was the second oldest incorporated town … Read more
Renowned geological aerial photographer Michael Collier gives Callan a lift over the Fort Valley and Massanutten Mountain in his two-seater Cessna.
I was up in Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota) for most of the week, working on a new teaching module for the InTeGrate project. On the way between our work area and the cafeteria where we ate lunch, we passed the geology department’s rock garden. They have some great specimens there, some big, some small. Here … Read more
The broad symmetry (with smaller-scale variations) of this fold caught my eye as particularly artful when I saw it (at Howard’s recommendation) last summer in the Canadian Rockies: Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, Canada. I see a butterfly. What do you see? Happy Friday.
Happy Friday! Here’s a view of the folded contact between the (older, lower) New Market Formation, and the (younger, upper) Lincolnshire Formation, as exposed in Staunton, Virginia: The contact has been folded, pretty intensely: The New Market Formation is massive, light-colored, and exhibits fenestral texture here. The Lincolnshire is darker, more thinly-bedded, and is chock … Read more
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 weekend, after we checked Lily in for her race, I spotted some boulders near the check-in site. The next morning, once the race had started but before we could cheer her on, my field assistant and I went back to the boulders to check them out. My field assistant’s planners had forgotten to pack … Read more
Last week before GSW, I spent several pollen-choked hours in Rock Creek Park, GigaPanning some of the rocks of the Rock Creek Shear Zone. Here are some exposures in the bed of Broad Branch that show lovely kink banding. In at least one spot, you can see a conjugate pair, so these rocks were (1) … Read more
The Friday fold combines a moment of insight on a field trip in the Archean Superior Province and a new paper published this month in the journal GEOLOGY.
Today, let’s go back to the Pike Dam, where we spent some lovely moments last week, agog at the lovely graded beds and flame structures visible there. In contrast, today we want to examine the deformational structures seen elsewhere at this same outcrop. There are folds and faults and joints and more exotic fare: tension … Read more
Two years ago, I took a trip to the Phoebe Hall Knipling Outdoor Lab, which is Arlington, Virginia’s outdoor education facility in the Pond Mountains (southern continuation of the Bull Run Mountains), on the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge geologic province. I was invited back last week to look at some new exposures. I … Read more
For the Friday fold today, let’s return to the warmth of Mosaic Canyon in Death Valley National Park, California: Can you see it there? Let’s zoom in on the dark area in the middle of that first photograph…. Ahh! Now that’s a fold to end the week on! Enjoy the weekend, everyone.