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9 April 2014
Faults disrupting the contact between the Muleros Andesite and Mesilla Valley Formation shale
Hark! What gleams on yonder contact? Well, there’s no glaciers to polish anything ’round these here parts (southernmost New Mexico + westernmost Texas), so I reckon it must be fault polish. Let’s test that hypothesis by looking for slickensides… Sure enough! There they are! Unlike the deformation we saw yesterday, this faulting of the contact between the Muleros Andesite (Eocene) and the Mesilla Valley Formation shale (Cretaceous) into which it …
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.