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17 April 2017
Liesegang rings in a natural sandstone “tile”
An easter egg on a piece of toast? No, it’s a nice example of Liesegang rings in a slab of sandstone. Explore more in this blog post.
20 September 2016
A virtual field trip to examine the Peninsula Sandstone on Table Mountain
Take a virtual field trip to Table Mountain, near Cape Town, South Africa. Digital media to explore from the site include: a 3D model, 3 GigaPans, and a 360° spherical photo!
8 July 2016
Friday folds: Kinkell Braes, Scotland
When I took you on a virtual field trip to Kinkell Braes earlier this week, I didn’t mention that the sandstones are folded there, now did I? Let me remedy that omission now: That is a plunging anticline that you could actually take a plunge into: And here’s a syncline to match. Happy Friday. Hope your week was a good one, and that your weekend is even better.
4 July 2016
Virtual field trip to Kinkell Braes, Scotland
Walking along the shore east from St. Andrews, Scotland, along the seaside sandstones of Kinkell Braes, you encounter several extraordinary examples of geology. It’s a great place for the next stop on our Grand Tour of the geology of the British Isles. Here’s the scene: The first stop is a giant eurypterid trackway, potentially the largest invertebrate trackway in the world (Whyte, 2005), on the underside of an overhanging sandstone …
29 June 2016
Trace fossils in sandstone from Barns Ness
Check out this sandstone cobble I saw at Barns Ness – it comes bearing gorgeous trace fossils. Can you spot them? Lens cap for scale in all these photos. The next three are close ups of the burrows from the previous image: Plus two more, from other cobbles I encountered::
27 June 2016
Small faults in upper Old Red Sandstone, Dunbar, Scotland
Dunbar, Scotland, is a nice little seaside town that also happens to be the birthplace of the conservationist John Muir. My family and I have been based out of here this week on our European geological GigaPan expedition. But on our first morning, upon visiting Siccar Point (which is nearby), I threw out my back, and spent most of the next two days recuperating. I did manage a short walk …
16 May 2016
Trace fossils in the Massanutten Sandstone
Over the weekend, my wife and I took a walk with our son at the Storybrook Trail, an accessible trail with a fine overlook to the east over the Page Valley. There, the Massanutten Sandstone shows a bunch of big beefy trace fossils at this site: both bedding-parallel (Arthophycus-like) and bedding-perpendicular (Skolithos-like) traces. Here’s Bax on a photogenic slab of the quartz arenite, showing the inch-wide bioturbation: A short distance …
15 March 2016
Timberville
Join Callan for a virtual field trip, as he shares dozens of photos from a recent ‘field review’ of a new geological map in Virginia’s Valley & Ridge province. Highlights: graptolites, trace fossils, geopetal structures, folds and faults.
19 August 2015
Iron oxide sweat stains in sandstone
What do a sweaty baseball cap and fractured sandstone have in common? Episodes of absorption of dirty liquids that pile up material such as iron oxide at the soaking front.
21 May 2015
Soft sediment deformation in sandstone and shale, Bolt Mountain
Two nice new examples of soft sediment deformation structures in Pennsylvanian-aged clastic sedimentary rocks from West Virginia.
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.