Our local NSF geoscience education guru, Jill Karsten, is retiring. She and her husband, Rodey Batiza, are packing up their lives and moving back home, vacating the Beltway for good. This might be viewed as a shame as far as geoscience education funding is concerned: Jill has made her mark acting as an advocate of … Read more
Join Callan for a virtual field trip, as he shares dozens of photos from a recent ‘field review’ of a new geological map in Virginia’s Valley & Ridge province. Highlights: graptolites, trace fossils, geopetal structures, folds and faults.
Explore a series of spherical photos taken on a field review of a new geologic map in western Virginia.
It’s been a week and a half since Mountain Beltway has seen any publishing action, given the overlapping timesucks of the AGU Fall Meeting and the end of the semester. But now I’m back in the Appalachian mountain belt, and my grades are all in, and I have time to think about indulgences like blogging … Read more
I have known for a long time about a diamictite in the latest Devonian part of the Appalachian stratigraphic sequence, since it is exposed in the lowermost part of the section (western end of the outcrop) at Sideling Hill, Maryland. When I led field trips there, I talked students through the multiple possible origins for … Read more
When snail shells are deposited in a bunch of sediment, they serve as tiny architectural elements, with a “roof” that protects their interiors. Any sediment mixed into the shell’s interior will settle out (more or less horizontally), and then there will be empty space (filled with water, probably) above that. As burial proceeds and diagenesis … Read more
Another gem from Saturday’s Historical Geology field trip: the bottom of a fine sandstone bed in the Devonian Brallier Formation, showing a variety of primary sedimentary structures, including tool marks, trace fossils, and several flute casts. Current flow direction here would have been from upper left toward lower right. Here’s a version of the photo … 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
An outcrop of Silurian-aged Rose Hill Formation in West Virginia reveals excellent examples of ripple marks and trace fossils.
My favorite place to have lunch in Montana is at the Grinnell Glacier cirque in Glacier National Park. This is the dining room table: You’re looking at a bedding-plane-parallel exposure of Mesoproterozoic stromatolites here. Every few years, I’m lucky enough to hike up there with motivated students and share food atop this unparalleled view into … Read more