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9 June 2016
Storm deposits in Tonoloway Fm. limestone – a virtual sample
Our series of virtual samples continues! This week, I’m presenting examples of a visualization combination that leverages the advantages of the GIGAmacro system with the 3D ‘virtual sample’ perspective of the Sketchfab-hosted model: the same sample presented in both formats. Today, we feature a lovely slab of limestone, chock full of fossil material, and showing both primary sedimentary structures like graded bedding and cavity fills (both geopetal indicators), but also …
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 …
2 May 2016
3D models to spin and twist
More 3D models: digital facsimiles of real rock samples. Check them out and explore! Clinker from the Powder River Basin, Wyoming: Ripple marks from the Rose Hill Formation, West Virginia: Meta-komatiite from the Red Lake Greenstone Belt, northern Ontario, Canada:
27 March 2016
Another trio of 3D models
Here are three more of my Photoscan-generated, Sketchfab-hosted 3D models of rock samples: Mud cracks in Tonoloway Formation tidal flat carbonates, Corridor H, West Virginia: Diorite from the eastern Sierra Nevada of California: Vein cross-cutting foliated & lineated gneiss, Blue Ridge basement complex, Virginia:
23 December 2015
Four new GIGAmacro images of sedimentary rocks
It’s been a week and a half since Mountain Beltway has seen any publishing action, given the overlapping timesucks of the AGU Fall Meeting and the end of the semester. But now I’m back in the Appalachian mountain belt, and my grades are all in, and I have time to think about indulgences like blogging again. Let me make up for it now with a suite of four new macro …
5 October 2015
Trace fossils in the Juniata and Tuscarora Formations
Route 33 in Pendleton County, West Virginia cuts across the lower Paleozoic stratigraphic section. I went there this past spring on a sedimentology and stratigraphy field trip with the GMU sed/strat class. The trip was orchestrated by professor Rick Diecchio. Here are some scenes from two of the stops – the upper Ordovician Juniata formation (red sandstones and shale intepreted as Taconian molasse) and the overlying Silurian Tuscarora Formation (thick …
29 August 2015
Mystery structure: please help identify / interpret
I have a mystery for you today: These are samples of Tonoloway Formation carbonate (not sure if it’s limestone or dolostone in retrospect), with bedding more or less horizontal in these images, and a few petite stylolites running orthogonal to that. The top sample has a gentle fold 2/5ths of the way across. All of the samples are from the same site in West Virginia, along Corridor H. I’m wondering …
5 August 2015
Ripple marks and trace fossils in the Rose Hill Formation
An outcrop of Silurian-aged Rose Hill Formation in West Virginia reveals excellent examples of ripple marks and trace fossils.
24 April 2015
Friday fold: Bloomsburg Formation at lime kilns on C&O Canal
Milepost 127.4 (High, 2001) on the C&O Canal: …Cool if you’re into history. …Cool if you’re into economic geology. …Cool if you’re into Friday folds! Reader Eric Fulmer sent me this photo (along w/ two others you’ll see in weeks to come). Thanks, Eric!
21 January 2015
Bloomsburg Formation in GigaPan
Three images, working our way in from outcrop setting to hand sample: link link link These fine red sandstones are the Silurian-aged Bloomsburg Formation, as it crops out in Fort Valley, Virginia. What would we see if we kept zooming in? …Stay tuned…
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.