Today, two examples of outcrops that reveal an overprinting relationship between metamorphic cleavage and sedimentary bedding. Both are Devonian in depositional age, from the new stretch of New Route 55 in West Virginia, west of Moorefield. The first is from limestones of the Helderberg Group, and the second is from shale of the Brallier Formation. … Read more
Nice straight-limbed syncline in the Helderberg Group of West Virginia (Devonian limestones, mainly): Alan Pitts shot a sweet GigaPan of this outcrop which you can explore here, or you can just look at this zoomed-in detail: Aaron Barth is down there in the lower right corner for scale.
More evidence of currents in the Devonian deep… Primary structures that give us clues, preserved in a place where preservation over 360 million years isn’t necessarily guaranteed. As you might expect, this turbidity currents roared in from the east, where the mountains were rising, and generating a fair bit of sand and mud, during the … Read more
Last weekend, my wife and I joined friends for a weekend of cross-country skiing in the wonderful Canaan Valley of West Virginia. On the way back, between the towns of Burlington and Romney, West Virginia, I saw this folded shale on the north side of Route 50: You can click on that panorama to make … Read more
The Friday fold is found on a newly-opened section of road in West Virginia. Join Callan in checking out some synclines and associated faults in the Devonian-aged Brallier Formation.
This blog has been noticeably photo deficient lately! Time to remedy that. Today, I offer you a couple of shots of the Brallier Formation (shale / fine-grained sandstone) in West Virginia’s Valley & Ridge province, a few miles northwest of Moorefield, on the newly-opened section of New Route 55. The Brallier was deposited in a … Read more
Callan and three students visit a world-class outcrop of columnar jointing in Shenandoah National Park.
Today’s fold is an anticline and its neighboring syncline, both exposed along a newly-opened stretch of New Route 55, west of Moorefield, West Virginia. The new Route 55 is a classic porkbarrel boondoggle courtesy of the late Senator Robert Byrd, but doggone if it didn’t open up some lovely new roadcuts. Here’s a stitched image … Read more
Some fall photographs from 2007, taken of the south fork of the Shenandoah River, southeast of Massanutten Mountain, in Virginia’s Valley & Ridge province. Photos are by my NOVA colleague, the biologist (and pilot) Mike Peglar: Our leaves are changing color now, and I’d imagine if we were soaring over the Shenandoah Valley this morning, … Read more
The Friday fold is a guest photo by James Edward Bailey, a 5th grade student from Reston, Virginia. It is the anticline shown is known as “the Devil’s Backbone,” located near Marlinton, West Virginia, right on the boundary between the Valley & Ridge province and the Appalachian Plateaus. It clearly shows differential weathering of weaker layers and tougher layers. …Also some lovely fall colors!