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24 June 2022
Friday fold: Kinked Lynchburg metasediments near a soapstone body
Happy Friday! Here are some kink-folded metasediments from Virginia’s Lynchburg Group to help usher in the weekend.
21 June 2022
Another example of overturned bedding
One of my favorite tricks is using bedding / cleavage intersections to identify tectonically inverted strata. On a field trip yesterday to check out soapstone quarries in the Albemarle/Nelson border region, I got to see this lovely example of Lynchburg Group metasediments that showcased a textbook example of the phenomenon: Bedding was initially horizontal, or close to it, and cleavage (formed under tectonic compression) initially vertical. Subsequent deformation rotated the …
25 June 2021
Friday fold: The Blue Ridge Tunnel
Inside the Blue Ridge (in an 1850s-era railroad tunnel), Callan finds folds and boudinage that formed during Appalachian mountain-building.
7 May 2021
Friday fold: Lynchburg Group
On his way to get his COVID vaccine, Callan visits a new outcrop showing folded and faulted strata of the Neoproterozoic Lynchburg Group.
31 July 2020
Friday fold: Two Mile Run Overlook
I spied an anticline last weekend while engaging in a day of solo geologizing along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. At Two Mile Run Overlook, I gazed west toward the southern tip of Massanutten Mountain, and noted what appeared to be an anticline in the Blue Ridge foothills: Annotated: And here it is in Google Maps, with the perspective rotated to looking ~along strike to the north, and I …
14 June 2019
Friday fold: kinked cleavage at Harpers Ferry
Last weekend was the annual meeting of the eastern section of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. On Friday afternoon, we visited Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and my colleague Beth Doyle led a great field trip to examine the rocks exposed there. This was my favorite outcrop we saw: Here is a close up of this outcrop, which is framed by (anthropogenic) rock wall: Dipping shallowly from upper left to …
13 April 2018
Friday fold: Blue Ridge gneiss in the University of Kentucky rock garden
The Friday fold is on display in a rock garden outside the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Kentucky.
30 March 2018
Friday fold: Recumbent Harpers
Stop the presses! This late-breaking Friday fold has just been submitted here at Friday Fold Headquarters. This is from Philip Prince/Virginia Division of Geology and Mineral Resources: It’s a recumbent fold of Harpers Formation metasandstone in the James River Face area. Pretty lovely exposure. This outcrop would make a good 3D model. Happy Friday to all. Hope it’s a good one!
19 January 2018
Friday fold: crumpled quartz vein from VGFC
Remember the Virginia Geological Field Conference from back in October? Well here’s a folded quartz vein we observed along a small shear zone in the Blue Ridge basement complex. There are two views of it, from approximately perpendicular points of view: These rocks are Mesoproterozoic, but the vein would obviously be younger than that, and the deformation is likely Alleghanian in age (late Paleozoic). Annotated copies of the photos:
27 October 2017
Friday fold: Quantankerous veins
What does it mean for a vein to be “quantankerous?” Well, to start with, it’s quartz. Second, it has to be disagreeable or cantankerous. This vein, seen in meta-arkose of the Catoctin Formation near the summit of the Blue Ridge at Rockfish Gap (not Afton Mountain), is such a quantankerous individual: You’ll notice its “S” shape, which might imply top-to-the-left kinematics. But just down the outcrop is this set of …
18 October 2017
VGFC 2017: Limbs of arkose
The 2017 Virginia Geological Field Conference had a heavy arkose infusion. Meet some of these feldspar-rich Neoproterozoic sediments of the Lynchburg Group.
15 April 2017
Basement xenoliths in Catoctin Formation, Compton Pass
My son and I hiked Compton Peak in Shenandoah National Park this morning, and saw these two lovely examples of xenoliths. The example above is small, but it shows clearly the difference between the coarse, felsic basement rock (Mesoproterozoic granitoid, comprising the xenolith) and the surrounding fine-grained dark green metabasalt of the Catoctin Formation (Neoproterozoic). Here’s another, bigger example: These two Blue Ridge examples both illustrate the principle of relative …
6 June 2016
Cleavage refraction in Konnarock Fm. rhythmites – a virtual sample
Here’s 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. In this case, it’s a lovely example of cleavage refraction going from meta-clay-shale (now ‘slate’) through a graded bed of fine sand and silt. [gigapan id=”187755″] Link GIGAmacro by Callan Bentley [sketchfab id=”fb3eb77f46524d15b3a23649c63cd863″ start=”0″ spin=”” controls=”0″] Photoscan model by Marissa Dudek …
20 April 2016
Cooling columns of the Catoctin Formation, Indian Run Overlook, Shenandoah National Park
An inaugural visit to an outcrop in Shenandoah National Park reveals the signature of lava flows ~600 million years old.
2 April 2016
Five new GIGAmacro images
Here are a few new images I’ve been working on with my home-based Magnify2 imaging system from GIGAmacro. Strophomenid brachiopods from Mississippian Mauch Chunk Formation, West Virginia: [gigapan id=”185738″] Link Boninite from New Caledonia: [gigapan id=”185707″] Link Lepidodendron scale-tree bark from Poland: [gigapan id=”185689″] Link Potassium feldspar crystal, from a pegmatite: [gigapan id=”185688″] Link Catoctin Formation greenstone from a feeder dike east of Linden, Virginia: [gigapan id=”185681″] Link Enjoy exploring …
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! [sketchfab id=”4453575da99743679a083363a0429b63″ start=”0″ spin=”” controls=”0″] [sketchfab id=”4333df612167415a8e216cef25e8cac6″ start=”0″ spin=”” controls=”0″] [sketchfab id=”cb58f446782d4736b699127884b46d16″ start=”0″ spin=”” controls=”0″]
29 March 2016
Four new GIGAmacro images
Here are a few new images I’ve been working on with my home-based Magnify2 imaging system from GIGAmacro. Archean basement complex gneiss from the Gallatin Range of Montana: [gigapan id=”185543″] Link (If this looks familiar, that’s because one of the samples I imaged with the Photoscan 3D modeling technique and published on Sketchfab the week before last.) Banded iron formation from Minnesota with ooids and stromatolites: [gigapan id=”185076″] Link Intrusion …
15 January 2016
Friday fold: Harpers Ferry
The geology east of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is cool. It’s Blue Ridge rocks, from basement to the cover sequence, tilted to the west and broken and repeated by the Short Hill Fault. Here’s a look at a detail of the Geology of the Harpers Ferry quadrangle by Southworth and Brezinski (1996). So there’s a fault! Good – but the title of this post isn’t “Friday fault” – Where’s the …
12 October 2015
Bedding/cleavage GigaPans at Harpers Ferry, WV
I’ve been thinking lately about Harpers Ferry, the spot where West Virginia, Virginia, and Maryland meet, at the confluence of the Potomac River and the Shenandoah River. I’ve noted small outcrops of its overturned beddding here previously, and also described a book I read about the man who made the place infamous: John Brown. I went out there again last week with my NOVA colleague Beth Doyle, and we explored …
17 June 2014
Weathering on Old Rag Mountain 2: Opferkessel
Yesterday, I pointed out an example of differential weathering on Old Rag Mountain, in Shenandoah National Park, in Virginia. Today, I’d like to shine the spotlight on another example of weathering to be seen along the trail there: little weathering pits that occur on the top of the granite outcrops. These are opferkessel. Some people call these “potholes,” a term I do not approve of in this context. To me, …
