A suite of new 3D models
A showcase of five new 3D digital models of awesome rock samples and outcrops, produced using Agisoft Photoscan.
A showcase of five new 3D digital models of awesome rock samples and outcrops, produced using Agisoft Photoscan.
Remember the diamictite I featured here a few weeks ago, from Islay? It was the one that might be a Snowball Earth diamictite. Well, if you follow Snowball Earth science at all, you’ll doubtless be aware that the glaciogenic sediments are characteristically overlain by “cap” carbonates. There’s a stratigraphic successor to the Port Askaig Tillite, … Read more
The news yesterday of 3.7 Ga stromatolites in Greenland prompts a closer look at 3.22 Ga microbially-induced sedimentary structures in the Barberton Greenstone Belt’s Moodies group sandstones.
This is the Split Rock at Clachtoll, on the shore of the North-West Highlands of Scotland. You’re looking out to sea, over the Minch. It’s the site that graces the cover of the excellent book A Geological Excursion Guide to the North-West Highlands of Scotland, by Kathryn Goodenough and Marten Krabbendam. “Clach toll” apparently means … Read more
Thanks to the website ScottishGeology.com, run by Angus Miller, I learned of Barns Ness, a Mississippian-aged limestone fossil site on the shore not far from where we are staying at Dunbar. We ventured out there on Saturday afternoon, in search of fossils. The presence of the Dunbar Cemenet Works nearby is an indication that this … Read more
Today concludes a weeklong run of virtual samples. For the past five days, I’ve been presenting examples of a visualization combination that leverages the advantages of the GIGAmacro system with the 3D ‘virtual sample’ perspective of the Sketchfab-hosted model: the same sample presented in both formats. Today, we finish up with a stromatolite from the hypersaline … Read more
Here are a few new images I’ve been working on with my home-based Magnify2 imaging system from GIGAmacro. Archean basement complex gneiss from the Gallatin Range of Montana: [gigapan id=”185543″] Link (If this looks familiar, that’s because one of the samples I imaged with the Photoscan 3D modeling technique and published on Sketchfab the week … Read more
I saw mention of thrombolites exposed along the shore of Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake the other day in my Facebook feed; because the description cited a professor at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, I prompted my friend and colleague Tiffany Rivera, also a geology professor at Westminster, to go check it … Read more
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
The other fossil I saw at the eclectic and haphazardly-curated Strasburg Museum was this stromatolite. Top view: Side view: Probably this comes from the Cambrian-aged Conococheague Formation, although the Beekmantown Formation (early Ordovician) is another possibility.