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10 July 2020
Friday fold: Candigliano River, Italy
Reader Michael Hiteshaw spotted some amazing folds this week while watching Kayak Session TV on YouTube. Though there’s a dramatic arc of “saving” a deer, both Michael and I felt our eyes drawn to the canyon walls where there are gorgeous folds in several sizes and shapes, with an emphasis on chevron folds: The video description on YouTube reads: Fabulous action by whitewater kayaker Fabrizio “Gass” Capizzo who saved …
19 June 2020
Friday fold: Scaglia Rossa chevrons at Lago di Fiastra
My friend Alan Pitts is orchestrating a virtual field camp for George Mason University this summer, utilizing outcrops in central Italy’s Apennine Mountains. Here’s a 3D model he just posted of one of the most impressive outcrops there: the chevron folds in the Scaglia Rossa limestones at Lago di Fiastra. I featured the site as a Friday fold 3 years ago when Alan took me there in person, but this …
13 September 2019
Friday fold: crinkled schist from Italy
AGU’s Chief Digital Officer Jay Brodsky offers up a fresh European fold for you today — and this one is on rather a smaller scale than Jay’s last Friday fold contribution… Click through for a bigger version. These are lovely crinkly folds in highly foliated rocks. I love boxy little crenulations like these. Jay tells me that this is from Graines, Italy, in one of the valleys of the Val …
14 February 2019
Friday fold: an arch of gypsum in Sicily
Ahh, Sicily on a Friday morning. Join us to examine a spectacular arch of gypsum from the Messinian evaporite package.
16 November 2018
Friday folds: more deformation from Cinque Terre, Italy
A return to coastal Italy on this wintry Friday… You’ll recall that The Other Callan shared some fold imagery with us a few weeks back as he explored the Cinque Terre region of Italy. He is back in the States now, and has been kind enough to share his geology-themed photos with me, so I can share them with you. Take a gander: Several people more familiar with these rocks …
5 October 2018
Friday fold: Vernazza, Italy
For this Friday’s fold, we must journey to the storied Cinque Terre coastline of Italy, where we will encounter some mysterious turbidites…
31 August 2018
Friday folds: Rifugio Fontana in the Dolomites
TGIF: “Thank Geology It’s Friday!”
Time for a fold or a dozen – let’s travel to the Italian Dolomites to see some kinky crumpled limestones…
24 April 2018
T. rex and the Crater of Doom, by Walter Alvarez
Walter Alvarez has a new book out, and its publication reminded me that though I read and appreciated The Mountains of St. Francis, I had never read his most famous work — the account of how he and his father and a team of other researchers zeroed in on an extraterrestrial impact explanation for the end-Cretaceous extinction. So last week I read T. rex and the Crater of Doom (1997). …
18 April 2018
Visiting St. Francis’s lovely limestone
The Cretaceous-Paleogene limestone called Scaglia Rossa was used to construct a basilica in tribute to St. Francis. Let’s head to Assisi and take a look.
13 February 2018
S-C fabric in limestone, Camerino, Italy
Some scaly Italian limestone shows off two foliations (S and C) which reveal the kinematic motions that built the Apennines.
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.