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11 January 2012
Splotchy Liesgang banding
At the Three Rondavels overlook in the northern Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa, I saw this chunk of quartzite with a peculiar variety of Liesegang banding (iron oxide staining of the rock by groundwater): A short distance away, I found another example: In one key way, I liked this second example better, even though the Liesegang banding wasn’t as well expressed here. The improvement is that it also shows bedding, …
10 January 2012
African penguins
African penguins (formerly “jackass penguins”) at Boulders Beach, Simon’s Town, South Africa:
9 January 2012
‘Bugs’ I saw in South Africa
Here is a collection of creepy-crawlies I saw in South Africa: Big grasshopper/katydid orthopteran: Another big orthopteran (“locust”?), obviously beefier than the previous one: Beach roach (Blattodea): Mating true bugs (hemipterans): Here’s a big snail, too: And best of all? This solpugid! Solpugids are arachnids, but they are not spiders. Along with vinegaroons, scorpions, pseudoscorpions, tailless whip-scorpions, ticks and harvestmen (“daddy-longlegs”), solpugids roam the world as effective predators but I’ve …
8 January 2012
Mammals I saw in South Africa
Elephant shrew Epauletted fruit bat Savannah baboon Vervet monkey Scrub hare Tree squirrel Woodland (?) dormouse Unidentified rat Cape porcupine (as roadkill only) Black-backed jackal Wild dog Banded mongoose Dwarf mongoose Small-spotted genet Spotted hyena African wild cat Lion Leopard African elephant Rock hyrax (dassie) Plains zebra Square-lipped (white) rhinoceros Common warthog Hippopotamus Giraffe African buffalo Greater kudu Bushbuck Waterbuck Blue wildebeest Bontebok Impala Springbok Kilpspringer Steenbok Common duiker Cape …
6 January 2012
Friday fold: the Contorted Bed
Callan reviews the geology of the superlatively auriferous Witwatersrand Supergroup of South Africa, and then zooms in on a distinctive marker bed near the base of the sequence. The deformation in this particular banded iron formation (BIF) is an aesthetic wonder, as this suite of images reveal. The layer outcrops in the heart of urban Johannesburg.
5 January 2012
Birds I saw in South Africa
Here’s my species list for the past three weeks: African penguin Cape gannet Bunch of gulls (didn’t bother differentiating them) Bunch of terns (didn’t bother differentiating them) Cape cormorant Reed cormorant White-breasted cormorant Cattle egret Little egret Grey heron Saddle-billed stork Marabou stork White stork Woolly-necked stork Hammerkop Greater flamingo African spoonbill African sacred ibis Hadeda ibis Glossy ibis Egyptian goose Some ducks (didn’t bother differentiating them) Common moorhen Blacksmith …
4 January 2012
Guess hoo’s back?
Scops owl, Kruger National Park, South Africa Hi everyone! I’m back in the States. There will be more photos of wildlife and geology from South Africa to come in the days and weeks ahead, but this little fellow can be an appetizer for you. It was a great trip, but it also feels good to be back at home and back at work!
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.