Great news – I have been awarded a great professorship for the next two years. The Chancellor’s Commonwealth Professorship is a great honor and a major investment by the Virginia Community College System in me and my GigaPan project. I get course release time, a summer stipend, and reimbursable expenses of around $7500. I intend … Read more
I’ve been thinking lately about Harpers Ferry, the spot where West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland meet, at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Shenandoah River. I’ve noted small outcrops of its overturned beddding here previously, and also described a book I read about the man who made the place infamous: John Brown. I … Read more
Hampshire Formation outcrops on Corridor H, West Virginia: [gigapan id=”178008″] link (Marissa Dudek) [gigapan id=”177198″] link (Callan Bentley) Faults in the Tonoloway Formation, Corridor H, West Virginia: [gigapan id=”176602″] link (Marissa Dudek) Conococheague Formation, showing stromatolites and cross-bedding: [gigapan id=”177155″] link (Callan Bentley) [gigapan id=”177355″] link (Jeffrey Rollins) Tiny folds and faults, from a sample … Read more
The answer to this week’s geological interpretation contest is revealed, sort of. Annotations, GigaPans, and outcrop detail photos reveal the story of equatorial fluvial incision and ancient slumping during the Carboniferous ice ages.
As part of my work on the GEODE project, I’m always looking for good imagery to teach key concepts in geoscience. One important concept that I’ve been thinking about lately is the principle of relative dating on the basis of inclusions. Just as you can’t bake a loaf of raisin bread without already having raisins … Read more
Some time ago, I featured as Friday fold the extraordinarily complex duplex structure to be seen in the Cretaceous “gastropod limestone” member of the Kootenai Formation at Sandy Hollow, Montana. Today, let’s take a deeper look through a couple of hand-shot GigaPan images: Here’s the bigger of the two: [gigapan id=”176119″] link Here’s one with … Read more
Recently, I posted about an excellent road cut in Fort Valley showing well-developed 10 cm+ Zoophycos trace fossils. Presented here are three new GigaPan images (two outcrop; one macro) of Zoophycos from the Devonian-aged Mahantango Formation: [gigapan id=”170978″] link [gigapan id=”170977″] link [gigapan id=”170875″] link These images are part of a new “virtual field trip” … Read more
My student Robin has been busy cranking out great new macro GigaPans. Check out a few of these new examples: [gigapan id=”169173″] link [gigapan id=”169045″] link [gigapan id=”169028″] link [gigapan id=”169039″] link [gigapan id=”168879″] link [gigapan id=”168843″] link [gigapan id=”168841″] link [gigapan id=”168794″] link
Pisolites are large primary concretions that develop in backreef or lagoonal settings such as the Permian Tansil Formation of New Mexico, into which is cut the enormous hole called Carlsbad Caverns.
Three images, working our way in from outcrop setting to hand sample: [gigapan id=”168000″] link [gigapan id=”168012″] link [gigapan id=”163085″] link These fine red sandstones are the Silurian-aged Bloomsburg Formation, as it crops out in Fort Valley, Virginia. What would we see if we kept zooming in? …Stay tuned…