4 November 2016

Friday fold: orogeny in a cobble

Posted by Callan Bentley

Happy Friday. Thank goodness it’s the last one before this horrible election season finally concludes.

Let’s celebrate with two cobbles from the beach at Papil Water, Fetlar, Shetland. They show small-scale folds in metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks of Ordovician or Silurian age, part of the ophiolite complex that makes up most of Fetlar.

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Each is a nice little sliver of mountain-building, small enough to hold in a hand. “Time in a bottle?” …Give me orogeny in a cobble!