Friday fold: epic Greenland coast
The Friday fold is a beautiful straight-limbed antiform from coastal Greenland, courtesy of photographer Alistair Knock. Check it out and see if you can find anything that Callan didn’t annotate.
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Cracking up
Callan shares a geological analogue that developed in his house yesterday: en echelon tension fractures, common in sheared rocks, appeared on his ceiling due to the Mineral, Virginia earthquake.
The Mineral, VA earthquake of August 23, 2011 – UPDATED
Callan describes his experience with the widely-felt east coast earthquake of August 23, and provides an analysis of the fault(s) that may be reponsible.
Glaciofluvial outcrop annotated
Callan’s answer to the riddle of the mystery outcrop is revealed. Spoiler: the glacier did it.
Hiking to the Burgess Shale
Callan visits the Burgess Shale in British Columbia’s Yoho National Park on a guided tour. This photo-heavy post discusses the depositional setting of this world-famous Cambrian fossil deposit, the landscape along the hike, and (of course) the fossils themselves.
Climbing Darton Peak
Callan embarks on an exhausting climb of a major summit in the Wyoming Bighorn mountains, a peak named in tribute of one of his geological heroes. Come join the trek to the top of Darton Peak!
Receptaculid at Medicine Wheel
On the way to visit the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, in a road-bottom outcrop of the Bighorn Dolomite (Ordovician), Callan finds a lovely receptaculid fossil (colloquially known as a “sunflower coral,” though it’s not a coral at all).
Friday fold: west Bighorn monocline
While out in the field with Butch Dooley last week, making major discoveries like I do, I was very impressed with the landscape-scale west Bighorn monocline, which takes formerly horizontal Madison limestone and skews it to a westward dip where the mountains end and the intermontane basin begins. It’s totally sweet. Check it out in photo form and gigapan, too.
The Rockfish Conglomerate
Callan presents a gazillion photos from a field trip to examine the Rockfish Conglomerate, a potential Snowball Earth glacial outwash facies from the Neoproterozoic of the Virginia Blue Ridge province.
Lawhorne Mill High Strain Zone
Callan attends a field trip in the Blue Ridge of Virginia, looking first at a Paleozoic shear zone that disrupts (and improves) Mesoproterozoic basement complex rocks.
Friday fold: faulted fold
The Friday fold features fine faults from a forgotten font, and a failed foto-finding forage.
The annual summer routine of Mr. Callan X. Bentley
Callan gets ready for a summer of travels out in the Rocky Mountains, including teaching a field geology course, participating in a workshop about teaching energy, visiting the Burgess Shale, and… getting married!
The grave of John Wesley Powell
Callan visits the grave of John Wesley Powell, second director of the USGS and explorer of the Grand Canyon, on an afternoon in Arlington National Cemetery.
A tidy little quartz crystal
A doubly-terminated quartz crystal (or “Herkimer diamond”) is found on a hike in the Silurian sandstones of Virginia’s Valley & Ridge province.
New hallway display: geologic provinces of northern Virginia
Callan shows off a new hallway display in his building at Northern Virginia Community College, showcasing the numerous geologic provinces of northern Virginia (as well as adjacent mid-Atlantic states).
The grave of Charles Walcott
Callan pays a visit to the grave of celebrated paleontologist and geological administrator Charles D. Walcott.
Some cool rocks from DGMR’s rock garden
A brief tour of some cool rocks, shown in close-up, from the rock garden at the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Geology and Mineral Resources in Charlottesville, Virginia, presented as a follow-on to the gigapan of the garden shown a month ago. The post features close-ups of plumose structure in slate, epidote slickensides, and graded bedding in ancient rhythmites.
Pamukkale 3
Callan shares a third batch of photos from the stunning travertine terraces at Pamukkale (“cotton castle”) in central Turkey, near the town of Denizli. Travertine structures on numerous scales are shown, adorned with flowers, tourists, and ducks.
Pamukkale 1
Callan shares some photos from his time last summer at the massive travertine deposits at Pamukkale, Turkey.
Friday fold: Turkish chert
The Friday fold is a contorted chert sample from Turkey.