Periodically, the administrators at my college will buy a lot of copies of a particular book, and then distribute them to the faculty as a way of sharing a useful resource or message. Generally, I find that I have other more urgent ways to spend my reading time: books about astronomy or rocks or ancient … Read more
Ahh, Sicily on a Friday morning. Join us to examine a spectacular arch of gypsum from the Messinian evaporite package.
It has been a while since I’ve reviewed any kids’ books here, but this one was so good that I just have to tell you about it. My son is now 6 and a half years old, and he’s interested in all sorts of natural history topics. Given that I’m a geologist, he’s probably more … Read more
A Friday fold from Germany showing an overturned sequence of sedimentary layers. Bedding / cleavage relationships show which limb is tectonically inverted. Furthermore, this fold was an “Aha!” moment for the budding geological mind of a small boy.
We saw last week how glaciation carved out a valley in Scotland called Glen Roy. As the glacier ground into the landscape, it liberated tremendous numbers of sedimentary particles from the bedrock, which is composed of Dalradian metamorphic rocks (mainly porphyroblastic schist in my observation). Then once that now-U-shaped valley had been deglaciated, a new … Read more
I just finished reading Gaia Vince’s 2015 volume called Adventures in the Anthropocene. The book chronicles the new version of Earth that humanity’s actions have enacted, exploring all sorts of relevant topics including biodiversity, energy use, urbanization, human population, ocean pollution, fish farming, deforestation, architecture, solar radiation management, etc. It’s quite comprehensive. The book I’m … Read more
The William & Mary “Rock Music” class has returned from Oman, bearing cultural insights and Friday fold photos!
Four Friday folds from Marli Miller’s online photo archive of geological images.
Scott White (@SeafloorScott) of the University of South Carolina pitched in with today’s Friday fold: Click to enlarge This shows a section of high grade gneiss in the spillway of the Saluda Dam in Columbia, South Carolina. Zooming in there, you can see a nice fold hinge on the left edge: Although I don’t know … Read more
A cactus you can pet with your bare hand? Turns out it can tell you something about whether that island contains any land iguanas. A case study in the easing of natural selective pressure.
As noted last week, I spent the week spanning New Year’s Eve in the enchanted isles of the Galapagos. The previous week (over Christmas) my family and I were in coastal Ecuador. I saw a total of three species of iguanas in the two locations, and they offer a neat little story of evolution. Let’s … Read more
For the final Friday fold of 2018, we return to Utah’s Slate Canyon, where “Mountain Beltway” reader Octavia Sawyer shares an anticline with parasitic folds shaped like “sea serpents.”
Dozens of delectable geological images from the Galapagos Islands, showing fluid basalt flows and violent pyroclastic deposits along with many primary volcanic features (and a bit of sedimentology thrown in for good measure).
New year’s day is the time I tally up and report the bird species seen in my yard on the forested slope of Massanutten Mountain in Shenandoah County, Virginia. This is my seventh such annual list. Here are the previous iterations: 2012 (39 species) 2013 (51 species) 2014 (58 species) 2015 (65 species) 2016 (59 … Read more
The Friday fold is a guest submission from AGU’s new Chief Digital Officer, and shows a spectacular set of recumbent folds in Crete.
Here’s a kid’s book to consider for the holiday season: The 50 State Fossils: A Guidebook for Aspiring Paleontologists, written by Yinan Wang and illustrated by Jane Levy. It has a simple structure: each state gets a page, and that page is divided into four parts: a map of the state w/ areas highlighted showing where … Read more
A guest Friday fold brings us to a position in the sky somewhere over eastern Death Valley National Park. Join us in contemplating the Titus Canyon Anticline.
A summary of resources to learn about the geology of Washington, D.C. and the surrounding region, in anticipation of AGU’s Fall Meeting being held in the nation’s capital city.
The countryside near Provo, Utah yields a terrific Friday fold in an outcrop of Cambrian limestone.