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
Okay; we are nearing the end of our Transect saga. During the late Paleozoic, mountain building began anew, and deformed all the rocks we’ve mentioned so far. This final phase of Appalachian mountain-building is the Alleghanian Orogeny. It was caused by the collision of ancestral North America with the leading edge of Gondwana. At the … 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
This one is also from the Millboro Formation: itty bitty brachs (not too much oxygen in those depths for building up big body sizes) that have been sheared during Alleghanian deformation.
Nice set of twist hackles on the fringe of this joint face:
Oriskany sandstone, folded into an S-fold, then snapped down the middle!
Hoo-hoo! An anticline in the hanging wall of a thrust fault in the Valley & Ridge. This is the redbeds of the latest-Ordovician Juniata Formation. Lynn Fichter for scale.
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.
Fault-duplicated double section of the (Silurian aged) erosion-resistant Tuscarora Sandstone:
Sweet hackles on the right; pen for scale.