Here’s another sight at the Eocene dikes site in Bluegrass Valley, Virginia, mentioned yesterday: That’s a gorgeous fault breccia, emplaced parallel to bedding, and parallel to the felsic dike (which can be found a few feet to the west / right of these photos): It was very poorly lithified, shockingly crumbly to the touch, considering … Read more
A virtual field trip to a quarry in far western Virginia, showing anomalous igneous intrusions (a dike and a sill) of Eocene age cross-cutting early Paleozoic carbonates.
This past weekend, I had a chance to visit Bath, Highland, and Alleghany Counties, Virginia, three amazingly beautiful places I had never before seen. I was tagging along on my colleague Rick Diecchio’s annual sedimentology & stratigraphy field trip for George Mason University. I was eager to learn from some awesome field sites from him … Read more
Recently, I posted about an excellent road cut in Fort Valley showing well-developed 10 cm+ Zoophycos trace fossils. Presented here are three new GigaPan images (two outcrop; one macro) of Zoophycos from the Devonian-aged Mahantango Formation: [gigapan id=”170978″] link [gigapan id=”170977″] link [gigapan id=”170875″] link These images are part of a new “virtual field trip” … Read more
A report from the field: new outcrops of Ordovician-aged turbidites featuring geopetal indicators, fossil content, and a structural overprint imparted during Pangaea’s assembly.
Spring is almost here! As you get ready for the equinox, enjoy this gentle fold on a Friday: These are turbidites (graywacke and shale) of the late Ordovician Martinsburg Formation, seen in Edinburg Gap, western Massanutten Range, greater Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. Bedding is flexed very slightly here, from moderately-dipping to more steep, and then back … Read more
A morning’s field trip yields an outcrop of excellent Zoophycos trace fossils in southern Fort Valley, Virginia.
A quick virtual field trip to the Neoproterozoic glaciogenic sedimentary rocks from the central Virginia Blue Ridge province: Can you feel the chill of Snowball Earth?
Three images, working our way in from outcrop setting to hand sample: [gigapan id=”168000″] link [gigapan id=”168012″] link [gigapan id=”163085″] link These fine red sandstones are the Silurian-aged Bloomsburg Formation, as it crops out in Fort Valley, Virginia. What would we see if we kept zooming in? …Stay tuned…
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.