You are browsing the archive for July 2018 - Mountain Beltway.
27 July 2018
Friday fold: new folds from the Empire Formation, Glacier National Park
Hiking Siyeh Pass in Glacier in Glacier National Park on Tuesday with my Montana State University field course, we spotted a few new folds in the Empire Formation (a transitional unit between Helena Formation and Grinnell Formation). Here is one of the students serving as a sense of scale, with interesting features on either side of him: On the left, there are small scale folds in a regular little train: …
20 July 2018
Friday fold: Alpine peak containing a high elevation recumbent fold
Via Twitter, a Friday fold from Maddy Rushing: #FridayFold, @callanbentley? pic.twitter.com/eaKIuuvFgB — Maddy Rushing (@komaddyite) May 25, 2018 This is in the Alps of Switzerland; I don’t know more about it than that. If you recognize the site or the geology, educate us in the comments!
16 July 2018
Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer
Religion Explained is an interesting book. It examines the phenomenon of religion in human beings from the perspective of our best understanding (as of 2001) of neurology, psychology, anthropology, and evolution. It takes the modern scientific understanding of how brains evolved, and looks there for the origins of religious thought and its tenacity despite countervailing forces. Pascal Boyer’s contention is that we can come to understand religion better by thinking …
15 July 2018
Chickie’s Rock, Pennsylvania
A virtual field trip to the deformed quartzites and metaconglomerates of Chickie’s Rock and Sam Lewis State Park in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
13 July 2018
Friday fold: the anticline at Chickie’s Rock
Chickie’s Rock is a prominent cliff of Cambrian quartz arenite (sandstone) in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I visited it last month with field trippers at the eastern section meeting of the National Association of Geoscience Teachers. One of the aspects of the site is this gentle anticline with axial planar cleavage: The yellow rectangle is my field notebook for scale. Another shot: Happy Friday to all!
6 July 2018
Friday fold: twisted turbidites at Usal Beach
Last week, I spent two perfect days camping with family at Usal Beach, in Mendocino County, California. Along the beachside cliffs there, I spotted plenty of lovely turbidites: graywacke and shale and a little bit of conglomerate that had been scraped off the subducted Farrallon Plate to help contribute to the bulk of the Franciscan complex. That accretionary process imparted some stresses on these deep-sea deposits, and in many places …
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.