1 December 2023 12:25 in Uncategorized by Callan Bentley
The Friday fold digs deep into the historical archives for a near-century old illustration of the geology of the Massanutten mountain system in Virginia’s Valley & Ridge geologic province.
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16 May 2016 10:27 in home, paleozoic, primary structures, quartz, sandstone, silurian, trace fossils, valley and ridge by Callan Bentley
Over the weekend, my wife and I took a walk with our son at the Storybrook Trail, an accessible trail with a fine overlook to the east over the Page Valley. There, the Massanutten Sandstone shows a bunch of big beefy trace fossils at this site: both bedding-parallel (Arthophycus-like) and bedding-perpendicular (Skolithos-like) traces. Here’s Bax on a photogenic slab of the quartz arenite, showing the inch-wide bioturbation: A short distance …
1 November 2013 10:37 in nova, rivers, silurian, teaching, valley and ridge, virginia by Callan Bentley
As soon as I got back from GSA, I had to run two field trips, back to back. Both are the same trip: my Historical Geology field trip to the Massanutten Synclinorium. Here’s yesterday’s crew perched on a moderately-dipping slab of Massanutten Sandstone along Passage Creek: Today, it’s the same routine all over again, though the weather ain’t as purty… Here’s Friday’s group at one of the four Veach Gap …
1 October 2013 11:26 in fossils, gigapan, m.a.g.i.c., primary structures, sandstone, sediment, shale, valley and ridge, virginia by Callan Bentley
I have two new GigaPans of hand samples to share with you this morning… The Edinburg Formation graptolites from Mint Spring, Virginia, that I featured here back in May, can now be explored in GIGAmacro hand sample: link Students: are these colonial or solitary organisms? Benthic, nektonic, or planktonic? Does this relate to their usefulness as index fossils? And here’s a graded bed from the Martinsburg Formation (Ordovician turbidites) exposed …
17 June 2012 19:45 in art, cambrian, devonian, gear, ordovician, silurian, tech, valley and ridge, virginia by Callan Bentley
A sketch of the Massanutten Synclinorium is presented, made with a Wacom Cintiq stylus/monitor combination.
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26 May 2011 10:33 in faults, gigapan, microbes, quartz, sediment, silurian, structure, valley and ridge, virginia by Callan Bentley
Here’s a gigapan I shot last yesterday, looking west from “Blue Hole” towards a cliff of Massanutten Formation sandstone, south of Waterlick, Virginia. A prominent fault zone can be seen in the center of the image. Unfortunately, the auto-stitch deformed my face. I look like Quasimodo. Oh well. As usual, you can see it full screen, by clicking on the word “Gigapan” in the lower right. There, you can find …
22 August 2010 08:59 in limestone, mountains, paleozoic, primary structures, sandstone, sediment, shale, structure, teaching, valley and ridge, virginia by Callan Bentley
Here’s a new video from Greg Willis, the same guy who brought us a fine video on Piedmont geology. In this new opus (20 minutes), Greg details the geology of the Massanutten Synclinorium (Shenandoah Valley, Massanutten Mountain, and Fort Valley) in western Virginia. WordPress isn’t letting me embed it here, but you should go and check it out!
31 July 2020 11:57 in blue ridge, cambrian, folds, Friday Fold, national parks, quartz, sandstone, valley and ridge, virginia by Callan Bentley
I spied an anticline last weekend while engaging in a day of solo geologizing along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. At Two Mile Run Overlook, I gazed west toward the southern tip of Massanutten Mountain, and noted what appeared to be an anticline in the Blue Ridge foothills: Annotated: And here it is in Google Maps, with the perspective rotated to looking ~along strike to the north, and I …
18 March 2019 14:30 in cleavage, folds, fossils, gigamacro, gigapan, primary structures, sediment, stratigraphy, valley and ridge, virginia by Callan Bentley
A virtual field trip to examine some deepwater clastic sediments shed off the first phase of Appalachian mountain building, and deformed in the third phase. It’s a lovely day for a field trip to the late Ordovician!
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1 January 2019 10:30 in birds, home, virginia by Callan Bentley
New year’s day is the time I tally up and report the bird species seen in my yard on the forested slope of Massanutten Mountain in Shenandoah County, Virginia. This is my seventh such annual list. Here are the previous iterations: 2012 (39 species) 2013 (51 species) 2014 (58 species) 2015 (65 species) 2016 (59 species) 2017 (56 species) It’s been a good year. Two new “seen for the first …
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