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8 February 2012
“Got migmatite?”
Had this brainstorm a few weeks back (or maybe months?). Been meaning to blog it up, but hadn’t gotten the chance to flesh it out. The geologic map of the Commonwealth comes from Chuck Bailey of William & Mary, who gave me permission to use it for this project. Anyhow – do you think there are enough Virginia geology nerds out there that I could sell these bumper stickers at …
7 October 2011
Friday fold: the Devil’s Backbone
The Friday fold is a guest photo by James Edward Bailey, a 5th grade student from Reston, Virginia. It is the anticline shown is known as “the Devil’s Backbone,” located near Marlinton, West Virginia, right on the boundary between the Valley & Ridge province and the Appalachian Plateaus. It clearly shows differential weathering of weaker layers and tougher layers. …Also some lovely fall colors!
29 September 2011
Salt dough physiographic province map of Virginia
By local prodigy Hannah Holland, elementary school student: Click through to make it bigger and see some details. Nice work, Hannah! Very impressive, and thanks for sharing!
20 September 2011
Giant City State Park, Illinois
Giant City State Park is a patch of protected forest south of Carbondale, Illinois, where there are some pretty cool exposures of Pennsylvanian-aged Makanda Sandstone. Here’s a typical look at one: Notice the deep chasm on the right. This leads, maze-like, to other flat-bottomed and vertically-walled canyons: The orthogonal joint sets produces some nice tall, cliff-like vertical exposures that reveal the history of these rocks in several stages: deposition by …
2 June 2011
Conglomerate from Dolly Sods
While my focus was more on bugs and plants than geology this time around, I did hike a new trail at Dolly Sods this past weekend, and on that trail I found several nice boulders of conglomerate. These stood out as being much coarser than the pervasive quartz sandstone of the Pennsylvanian-aged Conemaugh Group which otherwise dominates the outcrops and float of Dolly Sods. Therefore, they were photo-worthy. The conglomerate …
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.