I spent last Thursday on a long field trip in the Valley and Ridge province of northernwestern Virginia. Leading the trip was Dan Doctor of the USGS-Reston. Accompanying Dan was a UVA environmental science student named Nathan. And the NOVA crew rounded it out: professor Ken Rasmussen from the Annandale campus, associate professor Victor Zabielski … Read more
It seems I forgot to show this fossil when I found it in February of last year with my MSSE advisor John Graves. We were out in the Needmore Formation of the Fort Valley then. The Needmore is a formation I visited again yesterday with some colleagues in other outcrops further to the west. In … Read more
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
Ever since I saw this at Microecos and Myrmecos, the staff here at “Mountainecos” have been wanting to try it out. Behold my first three iPhone photos supplemented by a hand lens (Belomo triplet, at a distance of about 1.5 cm from the subjects): That’s a trilobite and a penny, by the way. Try it … Read more
This one is also from the Millboro Formation: itty bitty brachs (not too much oxygen in those depths for building up big body sizes) that have been sheared during Alleghanian deformation.
All the photos I posted over the weekend here were via iPhone, and hence not particularly high-quality, despite their excellent geological content. Now I’ve downloaded the photos from my real camera, and have a few good ones to show. Here’s a succession of photos of the same specimen of Pterodactylus longirostrus, each progressively more zoomed … Read more
In the American Museum of Natural History: These mylodontids reminded me of Puerto Natales…
My girlfriend’s mom was in town in January, and we took her down to visit the Capitol Building. The tour had a good bit of history, but definitely missed the opportunity to talk geology. I was particularly struck by the columns in the Hall of Statuary: Close up of one column, with my hand for … Read more
Seeing my cat in this posture: …made me think of this: Where did those hind legs go?
Today, you get a photo of a fossilized crinoid stem, from the Mississippian-aged Lodgepole Limestone of the Bridger Range, north of Bozeman, Montana. A pencil is provided for scale: Zoomed-in a bit, and cropped. The segments (“columnals”) show up nicely: Crinoids are echinoderms, the invertebrate phylum which includes sea urchins and sea stars. However, at … Read more