Friday folds from the Foreknobs Formation

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

Friday fold: Angel Island “IV”

Hey, let’s go back to Angel Island for today’s Friday fold. We’ve been there once, twice, thrice previously. The rocks in question are metaconglomerates that Jess Ball and I found at first only as float on the beach at Camp Reynolds, like these two examples: …Look at those beautiful elongated pebbles, transected by wee white … Read more

Friday fold: crinkled schist from Italy

AGU’s Chief Digital Officer Jay Brodsky offers up a fresh European fold for you today — and this one is on rather a smaller scale than Jay’s last Friday fold contribution… Click through for a bigger version. These are lovely crinkly folds in highly foliated rocks. I love boxy little crenulations like these. Jay tells … Read more

Friday fold: Gonzen, Switzerland

Science writer Gabe Popkin shared two fold photos with me this week – both from near Sargans, Switzerland, adjacent to the Rhine River Valley and the border with Lichtenstein. The photos shows the mountain called Gonzen. There, Jurassic limestones crop out in a very wavy pattern: I don’t know the geology of this area in … Read more

Friday fold: near Mistaya Lodge in the Canadian Rockies

Quick, awesome Friday fold here from the Canadian Rockies and Maggie Romuld: Maggie also posted another intriguing image of her hiking in the Canadian Rockies – and set geoTwitter abuzz with a discussion of whether she had captured load casts bulging out of the bottom side of a bed or stromatolites projecting upward from the … Read more

Friday fold: kinked cleavage at Harpers Ferry

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

Friday fold: Found folds

This week, for Friday folds, I offer up some random folds that have passed my perceptual transom this week. First up: In the new Netflix series Our Planet, in episode 7 (Fresh Water), an anticline/syncline pair makes a brief appearance as David Attenborough discusses glaciers as a reservoir for fresh water. Here is a screenshot: … Read more