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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).
The tale of the hammerheaded copper tadpole
Okay, now just what the heck is going on in these pictures? (All of them can be enlarged by clicking through.) The photos are different views of the same crystal. It is a broken hexagonal prism of quartz, fading to amethyst at the distal end, found by Doug Dupin of northwest DC during the excavation that led to the Palisades Museum of Prehistory. The crystal is about 3.5 cm long, …
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.