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24 January 2020
Friday fold: Pelham Parkway
A roadside boulder in the Bronx shows folded gneissic banding. It’s another guest-submitted Friday fold!
17 October 2018
The Big Oyster, by Mark Kurlansky
Mark Kurlansky might be the king of the micro-history. His books Salt and Cod were both excellent examinations of history in the context of those minerals and fishes. So when I saw The Big Oyster on the audio-book shelf at my public library, I checked it out, knowing roughly what I would get – a history anchored to that particular delicious mollusk. In this case, it’s a history of New …
31 March 2016
This week’s batch of 3D models
Anorthosite with lovely garnet reaction rims, a spherical hematite concretion, and some sweet breccia. Check them out and explore!
17 March 2016
A GIGAmacro view of the front and back of an anorthosite cobble
Here are two views of a single anorthosite cobble, collected in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York: Raw, natural surface: Link Slabbed and polished surface: Link As you zoom in and explore these GIGAmacro images, see if you can find the delicate little “necklaces” (reaction rims) of garnet wrapping around the few isolated pyroxenes!
5 March 2012
Scott Mandia, climate communicator
Callan has a conversation with Scott Mandia, a community college professor working on the national level to improve the public’s understanding of climate science.
16 November 2011
Labradorite is mineral du jour
Other members of the geoblogosphere have been posting brief image-heavy missives on labradorite over the past 24 hours. Collectively, they remind me that I’ve got a backlog of photos from the Adirondacks of upstate New York to share. Here are a few scans of cut and polished cobbles of the anorthosite from the Adirondack Massif, including bluish crystals of labradorite. What I find most lovely about these, though, is not …
28 October 2010
Accretionary Wedge #28: Deskcrops
In honor of this month’s Accretionary Wedge (geoblog carnival; this month the theme is “deskcrops”), I recorded the following short video, showcasing some samples I have in my office: stromatolite (western Montana), conglomerate (Patagonia), schist (New Hampshire), anorthosite (New York), amygdular meta-basalt (Virginia), amphibolite (California), hematite concretions (eastern Montana), and a stretched-pebble lineated meta-conglomerate (Turkey).
16 August 2010
Pine Marten, Adirondacks
Hello everyone, I’m back in my office after 7 weeks away. I had some great travels this summer, to Turkey, Montana, and New England… and great geological photos to share from each of those locations. I’m going to start off with something non-geological, though: something furry and alive! That, my friends, is a pine marten, a smaller relative of the fisher (“fisher cat,” in the local parlance) and a member …
11 March 2010
Folds of New York
Thursday is ‘fold day’ here at Mountain Beltway. Let’s take a look at some folds I saw last weekend in New York City. We’ll start with a bunch seen in the Manhattan Schist in Central Park. Here’s an example of the foliation in the schist. It’s got finer-grained regions and coarser, schistier regions with big honking muscovite flakes. Metamorphic petrologists: Does this correspond to paleo-bedding? (i.e. quartz-rich regions that metamorphose …