Friday folds: Dalradian schists at St. Ninian’s Isle

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Remember St. Ninian’s Isle? It is connected to Mainland Shetland by a tombolo. But it has rocks there, too. Here are some outcrops on the beach: If you visit these schisty fins, you’ll find they are populated by a cavalcade of small folds. Some of the folds are crisp things known as kink bands: Annotated … Read more

Hverir, Mývatn, Iceland

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Today, I offer up a few photos and some video from the Hverir geothermal area on the east side of Mývatn National Park in Iceland – a rift zone astride the central Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and thus an area where you would expect to see a high heat flow through the crust. Heat interacting with meteoric … Read more

A virtual field trip to Rathlin Island, Northern Ireland

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Rathlin Island lies north of mainland Northern Ireland, a few miles offshore. I spent three lovely days there this past summer, investigating the geology and appreciating the wildlife (puffins and other sea birds, and seals). The geology is pretty straightforward: Paleogene basalt overlying Cretaceous “chalk” (really not so chalky here – technically, it’s the Ulster … Read more

Virginia Museum of Natural History specimens in GIGAmacro view

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One of the small sub-projects of my 2015-2017 Chancellor’s Commonwealth Professorship is to create some GIGAmacro images of cool fossil specimens from the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville. Curator of paleontology Alex Hastings was good enough to loan us a few specimens to image, and hopefully there will soon be more where they … Read more

The Age of American Unreason, by Susan Jacoby

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I probably should have read this book eight years ago when it was first published, but somehow I missed it then. I recently heard the author, Susan Jacoby, on the podcast Point of Inquiry, and was impressed at the cannon of works she had produced. The current U.S. election cycle has spurred me to think … Read more

Stađarbjargavík

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Based on this photo, what do you think Stađarbjargavík might have to offer? If you guessed columnar jointing in basalt, you’d be right! Looking down the fjord, south of Hofsós (in Iceland): The place is basically a series of miniature Giant’s Causeways, full of unpopulated exemplars of cooling columns! Little coves separate the small peninsulas, … Read more

Pillows in Icelandic basalts

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Time is short these days, but I know you hanker for amazing geology. How about some pillow basalts from the Snæfellsnes* Peninsula, far western Iceland? Note the cm-demarcated pencil for scale. See if you can find it in the GigaPan version below: Link Handheld GigaPan by Callan Bentley, stitched with Microsoft ICE _________________________ * “Snay … Read more

Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren

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Lab Girl, by Hope Jahren, is a unique memoir. It describes Jahren’s journey through life from her childhood in the frigid northern Midwest to her eventual success as a celebrated scientist and an original thinker. The first thing you should know about it is that it is exceptionally well written (Hope Jahren Sure Can Write, … Read more