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14 February 2014
Friday fold: Valentine’s Day at Newberry Caldera’s big obsidian flow
Scott Johnson contributed this special “Valentine’s Day” edition of the Friday fold: a lovely primary igneous structure that evokes a heart: That’s a close-up view (lens cap for scale) that Scott took when he GigaPanned this feature: link … the big obsidian flow at Newberry Crater in Oregon. That’s a really dry lava flow that oozed out of the Earth sometime in the past thousand years or so. It’s even …
12 February 2014
Fossil clams at Devil’s Coulee, Alberta
At the eroded gully known as Devil’s Coulee in Alberta, you can find armored mudballs, dinosaur fossils (including eggshell), and even marine clams at higher levels in the sequence. Check out these lovely beasts: They lived and died on the western shore of the Western Interior Seaway during the Cretaceous period of geologic time. My Canadian Rockies field geology students visited this site in 2012. I’m taking students back again …
10 February 2014
Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams
When Michael Collier came to visit last year, he recommended a couple of books to me. I finally got around to reading the first of them – Refuge, a memoir mixed with natural history of Utah by Terry Tempest Williams. The arc of the story is essentially twofold: the women in Williams’ family get cancer, and get treated for cancer (mastectomies, chemo, nutritional supplements to negate the nausea of the …
7 February 2014
Friday fold: Hartland Quay, Devon
I ran out of folds last December, I asked for help on Twitter. Laura Hamilton was among the first to respond, with a link to this image: @callanbentley Hartland Quay, Devon UK. Huuuuge chevron folds! pic.twitter.com/7bhRfLib9Y — lau.rah (@hammijam) December 23, 2013 Thanks, Laura, for another great image!
5 February 2014
The Story of Earth, by Robert Hazen
Callan reviews Bob Hazen’s latest book, “The Story of Earth,” a history of our planet that emphasizes the coevolution of minerals and life.
3 February 2014
Ice seeps along Passage Creek
This past week, there’s been a beautiful sight along the stretch of the Fort Valley Road that goes past the Blue Hole section of Passage Creek. Click to enlarge Ice has been forming beautiful forms as groundwater seeps out along bedding planes in the Massanutten Sandstone (a Silurian-aged quartz arenite, folded during late Paleozoic Alleghanian deformation). At this site, the bedding dips moderately to the south. This is close to …
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.