Looking north along the Germany Valley, which lies in the core of a breached plunging anticline. The topography is defined by the erosion-resistant ridge of Tuscarora Sandstone. This is the Wills Mountain Anticline. The Tuscarora is Silurian; at the bottom of the valley (core of the anticline), you find Ordovician carbonates.
Fault-duplicated double section of the (Silurian aged) erosion-resistant Tuscarora Sandstone:
Sweet hackles on the right; pen for scale.
Radiating out from the greatest sense of scale EVER!
Nice one! … In spite of the highway department graffiti… Swiss Army Knife for scale!
Where are some ripple marks in the Hampshire Formation. Cell phone service is a lot more localized here in West Virginia, so we’ll see how many posts I manage today…
What do you think, folks? Do you like seeing field photos as I take them? Should I continue the Transect Trip instant photoblog series tomorrow as we traverse the Valley & Ridge?
Okay… That last plumose structure was nothing compared to this beauty…
Spectacular plumose structure on rusty joint surface Weverton Formation:
Bedding and cleavage intersect in the Weverton Fm. Bedding = Cambrian Cleavage = late Paleozoic (Alleghanian)
Gorgeous back-rotated quartz-filled tension gashes in the Antietam Fm. Sinistral sense of shear:
Side view of Skolithos tubes:
Looking down on Skolithos ichnofossils in the Antietam Fm. quartz sandstone:
A few rip-up clasts in arkosic matrix (Swift Run Fm.):
Live geoblogging continues… Here’s some nice round quartz pebbles in the Swift Run Fm:
Neoproterozoic arkose and mudstone above the basement complex:
Multiple anastomosing high strain zones cut through the Blue Ridge basement complex during Paleozoic mountain-building. Ar/Ar cooling ages on muscovite here are 320-340 Ma.
Charnockites are orthopyroxene-bearing granitoids, common in the core of the Blue Ridge Anticlinorium:
With a distinctive orange weathering rind:
Live geoblogging my post-NE/SE GSA field trip: Bill Burton and Chuck Bailey prep the group with a discussion of map patterns in the Blue Ridge…