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15 February 2011
Capadoccia 7
And now, for the final half of my final day in Capadoccia, Turkey… We continued hiking along up the scenic valley that I mentioned a few days ago, checking out the lovely scene in the lovely weather… The valley floor was reasonably wet and vegetated, but the higher slopes were eroding at a rate too quick for vegetation to get established. Here’s an exposure of the tuff there, bearing kandy-kolored …
14 February 2011
Volcanic breccia in Sierra foothills?
A year and a half ago, on my way back to Modesto from Yosemite, I pulled over at the side of the road and found a piece of urbanite full of whoppers. But that curiosity wasn’t what caught my eye and made me pull over in the first place. Instead, what I noticed was this: It appears to be some kind of volcanic breccia, based on the relatively angular clasts …
Dolostone ♥s shale
Originally posted in September 2010 as part of this missive on the Champlain Thrust Fault. Happy Valentine’s Day!
12 February 2011
Capadoccia 6
I’ve got two more batches of Capadoccia photos for you. Sorry if you feel bored with this continuing series — but I think it was not only my favorite part of Turkey (and geomorphologically interesting) but photogenic too… So on our final day in Capadoccia, Lily and I took a hike up another valley. We stopped along the way at this hoodoo church which has been preserved (i.e. the interior …
11 February 2011
Friday fold: Difficult Run fun
The Friday fold takes us to some high-grade metamorphic rocks in the Piedmont of northern Virginia.
10 February 2011
Mystery spikes
Mystery mineral from Mount Washington, New Hampshire: radiating needles of something black… I’d venture “tourmaline”… but you tell me.
Treasure trove of traces
Here’s an amazing sight that caught me unawares in Capadoccia — some paving stones outside a small “museum” (preserved Byzantine hoodoo church) that were chock full of some AMAZING trace fossils. Sense of scale is provided by a Turkish 1-lira coin, about the same size as a U.S. quarter. Check out the variety, size, and preservation quality of these gorgeous things: These are “negatives” — molds of depressions that were …
7 February 2011
Geologist scam
I just got an e-mail which screams “scam!” Apologies for having to reach out to you like this, but I made a quick trip to the UK and had my bag stolen from me with my passport and credit cards in it. The embassy has cooperated by issuing a temporary passport, I just have to pay for a ticket and settle Hotel bills. To be honest,i don’t have money with …
5 February 2011
Capadoccia 5
So where did we leave off with the Capadoccia photos? I think we mentioned a hike, right? Here’s Lily buying orange juice from two boys who operated a refreshment stand in the middle of nowhere. There was a lot of good, fresh fruit in this dry land, a fact which surprised me. Here’s some apricots in a tree: We emerged out of the valley in which we had been hiking …
4 February 2011
Friday fold: the importance of younging direction
Today’s edition of the Friday fold is a cross-section: Doesn’t look too spectacular, does it? — “Why, it’s just a bunch of strata folded into anticlines and synclines,” I’ll bet you’re thinking. But no… it’s actually more complicated than that. We know it’s more complicated by examining geopetal primary structures in the strata. Geopetal structures are primary structures which look different right-side-up than up-side-down. In sedimentary rocks, this includes things …
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.