Sunday morning, NOVA adjunct geology instructor Chris Khourey and I went out to Sugarloaf Mountain, near Comus, Maryland, to poke around and assess the geology. Sugarloaf is so named because it’s “held up” by erosion-resistant quartzite. It’s often dubbed “the only mountain in the Piedmont,” which refers to the Piedmont physiographic province. Here’s a map, … Read more
On the transect trip, I also saw some nice meso-scale “minor” structures that probably formed during Alleghanian deformation. Prominent among the ones that really impressed me were these en echelon tension gash arrays, deforming the Antietam Formation quartz sandstone and well exposed in blocks used to construct the wall along Skyline Drive and the Sandy … Read more
From the basement complex, the next unit up in the Blue Ridge province’s stratigraphic sequence is the Swift Run Formation. It rests atop an erosional unconformity. After the Grenville Orogeny (~1.1 Ga) added a swath of new crust along the margin of the North American continent, the landscape began to weather and erode. Eventually, an … Read more
Here we are in the Brallier Formation, a Devonian turbidite sequence. Prominent in the middle of this photo is the Bouma “C” horizon with the cross- bedding.
This photo is from the Millboro Formation: mostly deep water black shale, but with the occasional heavy turbidite coursing in and settling its bulk down on the squishy mud beneath. Some folks on our trip suggested these might be seismites: soft sediment deformation resulting from earthquake-induced vibration.
This is a nice sample of slicks. On the other side, burrows! I like that: a primary structure on one face, a secondary structure on the opposite side.
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…
On the September 2009 GSA field forum in the Owens Valley, the final stop of our first day was to check out the so-called “Crucifix Site,” along Chalk Bluff Road (north of Bishop, California, at the southern margin of the Volcanic Tableland). It’s called the “Crucifix Site” because there is a metal cross erected there: … Read more
A few photos from last May’s spring field trip with the Geological Society of Washington… Here’s the group at Chain Bridge Flats (far westernmost-Washington, D.C.), looked at the metamorphic rocks there — a metagraywacke melange known as the Sykesville Formation. Another group shot, with field trip leaders Tony (khaki shirt) and Gary (red jacket) Fleming … Read more
Since yesterday’s live-blogging the rock sample prep routine turned out blurry, I figured I owed it to this sample, and to you, to give everyone a better look. So I scanned it this morning. Penny for scale. Assuming that your computer screen is vertical, this is in the same orientation as when it was deposited: … Read more
Today during Physical Geology lab, I used our grinding wheel to plane down a turbidite sample than I collected this past December down in Chilean Patagonia. Thanks to the technological miracle of blogging via iPhone, I can send it to you in a mere 45 seconds. Enjoy the graded bed: let it transport you back … Read more