Another guest Friday fold (keep ’em coming, folks!) – This time from Eric Pyle of James Madison University: This is a weathered outcrop of the Connemara Marble in western Ireland, about a meter wide. Thanks for sharing, Eric!
Garnetiferous beds from the aureole of the Leinster Granite east of Baltinglass, County Wicklow, Ireland (Declan De Paor’s senior thesis mapping area, 1973). Manganese-rich metasediments. The prominent ‘elasticas’ or fan folds (folds with a negative inter-limb angle) are superimposed on isoclinal folds: so the brownish layer at top and bottom are the same, though that … Read more
One of my favorite places in Northern Ireland is the east side of the peninsula that hosts the tourist town of Portrush. There, two early schools of geological thought engaged in a battle. The opposing sides were: the Neptunists, who thought all stratified rocks, and in particular basalt, must form from precipitation from the sea, … Read more
Rathlin Island lies north of mainland Northern Ireland, a few miles offshore. I spent three lovely days there this past summer, investigating the geology and appreciating the wildlife (puffins and other sea birds, and seals). The geology is pretty straightforward: Paleogene basalt overlying Cretaceous “chalk” (really not so chalky here – technically, it’s the Ulster … Read more
Eric Pyle sent in today’s Friday fold – Eric reports that you can find this fold seaside, near Poulatedaun, Co. Clare, Ireland. Thanks for sharing, Eric!
Some of planet Earth’s best examples of basaltic cooling columns are found at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. In this post, explore four different kinds of interactive digital media as a way of experiencing the Causeway virtually, from the comfort of your computer.
Same beach as the Cushedun conglomerate post earlier in the week – but here we see the schist into which the rhyolite dikes intruded: It’s been folded! Happy Friday. Hope your weekend is rejuvenative and fun.
We arrived at Old Bushmills at 4:06pm, and the last tour of the distillery for the day had left at 4:00. But all was not lost – We were delighted to see that the visitor center area was paved in slabs of shale with tremendously large, well-preserved trace fossils – sinuous burrows parallel to the … Read more
My GigaPan expedition has landed at Rathlin Island, north of Northern Ireland, within view of Scotland, for a few days. The beach on Church Bay is cobble-covered and steep, and the cobbles reflect the island’s geology, with some anthropogenic components thrown in for flavor: Link GigaPan by Callan Bentley But I was struck by these … Read more
At the opposite end of the beach at Cushendun, Northern Ireland, we found some outcrops of schist – I’ll be featuring some of them as Friday folds later this week. But cutting across the schist was a pink porphyry, with big well-formed potassium feldspars. I splashed some water from the Irish Sea onto it to … Read more
I collected a photo set at the Giant’s Causeway to show the “textbook” examples of spheroidal (“onion skin”) weathering exposed on the road down to the causeway. My student Marissa Dudek used the photo set and Agisoft Photoscan to make a great 3D model of the site. She posted it on Sketchfab yesterday evening. Check … Read more
Zoltán Sylvester has contributed today’s Friday fold, an anticline in the Ross Sandstone of Ireland: Click image to go to the source (full sized). Thanks Zoltán! Happy Friday everyone.
This one is in my folder of ‘structure’ images on my computer, but it’s not one of mine. I’m not sure where it came from. A TinEye search turns up nothing. Perhaps one of you can tell me? Lovely subparallel kink bands… such gorgeous structure. Happy Friday!
My former student Aaron Barth sent me a few photos of disharmonic folding in metamorphic rocks in Ireland for a guest Friday fold…. Awesome! Thanks Aaron!
The Friday fold is an exposure of the Ross Sandstone in Ireland, bent into a syncline that dives below water.
Geoblogger Siim Sepp contributed this lovely fold. He says: I saw a nice fold in Ireland. I like it because it looks like SS to me which are my initials. If you want, you can post it as your friday fold. I haven’t used it yet in my blog. This small outcrop is in Donegal, … Read more
Whilst at the JMU Field Camp in Ireland this summer, my former student Alan Pitts (author of Not Necessarily Geology), collected this lovely “pocket fold” near Derryclare Lough and brought it back to the States. A couple of weeks ago, after a graduate school advising session at a pub in Fairfax, Alan gifted me the … Read more
Sometimes you find folds in funny places, like the side of a monastery. Guest fold from Maitri.