20 August 2015
Stromatoporoids in a Devonian reef
Posted by Callan Bentley
Here are a few shots of a Devonian aged reef exposed in Mustoe, Virginia – one of the sites I visited this spring with GMU’s Rick Diecchio, when he led his sedimentology and stratigraphy trip there.
At first, the outcrop made no sense to me – I kept searching for bedding, and failed to find it. Then, the reef interpretation clicked, and suddenly I didn’t “need” bedding any more…
Stromatoporoids were probably spongelike organisms, with layers like stromatolites, but in those layers they have a tiny architecture of ‘rooms’ and ‘pillars’…
A lot to see here – certainly a site I should return to some day with a GigaPan.
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.