On the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso, there is a sign for the Kidd Seismic Observatory. The sign has seen some brittle deformation of its reflective letters. I infer this due be due to differential shrinkage of the letters (relative to the sign they are attached to) in the intense Texas … Read more
Why are these people smiling? photo by Yvette Kuiper Because they are structural geologists, and they are psyched to be at an extraordinary outcrop: This is a famous pavement outcrop of polyphase-folded banded iron formation (BIF) near Soudan, Minnesota. I went there last fall before the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, on … Read more
In the past 24 hours, Erik Klemetti and Siim Sepp both gave us their top ten reasons for loving their branches of geo-science. Their lists demonstrated their passion for (respectively) volcanoes and sand, and so I feel inspired to make a list, too. Here are the top 10 reasons I love structural geology: 10. It’s … Read more
This beastie lives in an old quarry in West Virginia, along old Route 55. And from a slightly different perspective… This fold is in Devonian limestones of the Helderberg Group, kinked up probably during the Alleghanian Orogeny (the assembly of Pangea) in the late Paleozoic.
We were making dinner last week and took out a block of “silken” tofu* with less care than we should have, and it broke. But what a break! The fracture showed a gorgeous elliptical joint face that broken up into a twisted series of hackles along its fringe: That’s something nice homogeneous fine-grained rocks do, … Read more
These are turbidites of the Malmsbury Group in South Africa, on the east shore of False Bay. A couple of nice little folds running sub-vertically through the package… Happy Friday!
Callan and his wife journey to Africa’s southernmost point, and find a geological mystery there.
Last fall, when I was out backpacking in Dolly Sods, we left one of Lily’s water bottles on the dashboard of the locked (and windows-rolled-up) Subaru. When we got back to the car, we found it had experienced heterogeneous solid-state deformation. I took a few photos, so that those of you who are interested in … Read more
With my new “macrogigapan” rig from Four Chambers Studio, I produced these images last week as part of my Mid-Atlantic Geo-Image Collection project (M.A.G.I.C.). … Dive in! Porphyritic andesite from the Beartooth Plateau, Montana: [gigapan id=”96524″] Foliated limestone slate, location unknown: [gigapan id=”96977″] Clicking on the word “GigaPan” in the lower right corner will take … Read more
In the White Mountains of eastern California, just west of the Deep Springs Basin (site of my coldest camping experience ever, followed by a memorable morning walk in the playa and discovery of a bat mummified by salt), there lies a classic field mapping location, the Poleta folds. Here’s what it looks like from Google … Read more