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28 April 2010
Flames and pillows, Route 55
I took a look at some interesting blobby structures in the Swift Run Formation last week, and walked readers through my logic in tentatively concluding that they were ball & pillow structures (soft sediment deformation), though overprinted by a pervasive (Alleghanian) cleavage. As we move west in the Appalachian mountain belt, the rocks are less cleaved: the strain is instead taken up in large anticlines and synclines with a few …
Callan Bentley is Associate Professor of Geology at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. For his work on this blog, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers recognized him with the James Shea Award. He has also won the Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council on Higher Education in Virginia, and the Biggs Award for Excellence in Geoscience Teaching from the Geoscience Education Division of the Geological Society of America. In previous years, Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine, President of the Geological Society of Washington and President the Geo2YC division of NAGT.