Mississippian invertebrates from the Lodgepole Limestone
On a cold winter’s day, Callan harks back to a summer’s afternoon fossilizing in the Rocky Mountains. A few choice images of Mississippian-aged marine invertebrates are shared.
limestone
Some folds along the Crypt Lake trail
Hiking up to Crypt Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada, you can see some sweet stromatolites, We’ve already taken a look at the falls, but today, let’s zoom into the folds exposed in that shadowy cliff near the center… These limestone layers are Mesoproterozoic in age – they’re part of the Purcell (Belt) … Read more
Stromatolites along the trail to Crypt Lake
On the trail up to Crypt Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park (southernmost Alberta, Canada), there’s a ‘traditional’ hiking trail, and then an intense ledge on a glacial headwall that you must teeter along, including scaling your body up into and through a person-sized tunnel! Right at the transition between the two “phases” of the … Read more
Halite casts from Tonoloway Formation under the GIGAmacro lens
The work of team M.A.G.I.C. continues. This is a lovely sample quartet of salt cast samples from Silurian-aged Tonoloway Formation limestone. I collected these samples on Corridor H’s newly-opened section west of Moorefield, West Virginia, last spring. The big one at the bottom was collected by my friend Leigh Henry, who graciously loaned it to … Read more
Friday fold: Kink band in Lodgepole Limestone, Sacagawea Peak, Bridger Range, Montana
As I’ve mentioned previously, I spent some time making GigaPans this summer out west. Here’s Lily and me on the crest of the Bridger Range, enjoying the clear skies and great geology: When this portrait was taken (by our friend Lindsay), I was shooting this GigaPan: [gigapan id=”135511″] link Try exploring it to see if … Read more
Natural Bridge, Virginia
Our three-day karst theme wraps up today with a visit to Natural Bridge, Virginia, an impressive sight: I went to Natural Bridge early last week to give a talk to a group of Road Scholars (an Elderhostel-like program) about the Snowball Earth. Part of my compensation for the talk was a night’s lodging at the … Read more
A visit to Luray Caverns
To continue with the karst theme I initiated yesterday, let me share a few photos today from a visit last week to Luray Caverns, a large show cave in Page County, Virginia near the town of Luray. This was my first visit to Luray Caverns since I was a child. Probably it had been thirty … Read more
A new old sinkhole on Oranda Road
Take a look at this… Doesn’t look like much, does it? But it’s actually the surface expression of a vast, long-lived sinkhole. If you walk over to the hole and look in, you can’t see the bottom. It’s semi-supported by limestone boulders, but between the boulders, the soil and gravel filter down, down, down, like … Read more
Disconformity in northern Colorado
Have a look at this lovely (almost glowing) example of a disconformity between Coloradan limestone and overlying sandstone.
Friday folds: three lovely specimens from the Carleton College rock garden
I was up in Carleton College (Northfield, Minnesota) for most of the week, working on a new teaching module for the InTeGrate project. On the way between our work area and the cafeteria where we ate lunch, we passed the geology department’s rock garden. They have some great specimens there, some big, some small. Here … Read more