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24 July 2015
Friday folds: Fox’s and Foch’s
A final Friday fold (for now) from Howard Allen: This is : A view south across Kananaskis Lakes, Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, Alberta, through mist/low-hanging clouds. Snow highlights the Sarrail Creek Syncline and Warspite Anticline on the north faces of mounts Fox (left/east) and Foch (right/west). Rocks are Lower Carboniferous carbonates of the Banff, Livingstone and Mount Head formations. Happy Friday all – and thanks for sharing all these great …
10 July 2015
Friday fold: Lawson Syncline and Mount Inflexible
View of Lawson Syncline looking obliquely along strike (SSE) from an unnamed peak SW of Mount Inflexible, Kananaskis Range, Alberta. The axis of the syncline forms the bottom of the valley and plunges slightly toward the south. The syncline is in the hanging wall of the Sulphur Mountain Thrust sheet. On the right side of the photo, beds can be seen dipping to the right (west) in the ridge the …
3 July 2015
Friday fold: Opal Range, Alberta
Howard Allen is the Friday folder who keeps on giving… Here’s his latest: Multiple folds at top of ridge, Opal Range, Alberta. Photographed from Kananaskis Highway 40, looking SE. Beds are Carboniferous carbonates, probably Mount Head and/or Etherington formations. There are lots of great folds to be seen along that road. The Kananaskis Trail is in the “tourist shadow” of the nearby Trans-Canada Highway, which means it’s well worth your …
26 June 2015
Friday fold: Subvertical carbonates
Another Friday, another Friday fold from Howard Allen: Folds in near-vertical beds, north side of Grizzly Creek, Opal Range, Alberta. Beds are Carboniferous carbonates, Mount Head and Etherington formations. Enjoy your day!
19 June 2015
Friday fold: subglacial drag fold (Pleistocene) in Cretaceous sediments, Alberta
Howard Allen, a retired petroleum geologist from Calgary, and longtime reader of this blog, contributed this week’s Friday fold: Subglacial drag fold (Pleistocene) in Upper Cretaceous Horseshoe Canyon Fm. bedrock (sandstone, shale). The locality is SE of Drumheller, AB at UTM 12U 394247 5692469 (WGS84). Did you hear that right? Yes, you did: This is Cretaceous aged sedimentary rock, folded by a Pleistocene glacier, tens of millions of years after …
27 January 2015
Miette Group gritstone showing scours, mudchip rip-ups, cross-bedding, and dropstones
The coarser strata of the Neoproterozoic Miette Group in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta record changing water current strength over time, and maybe an iceberg or two.
31 December 2014
Tril-o-bits-and-pieces in a boulder on the Athabasca Glacier moraine
I love moraines, rocky beaches, gravel bars – they are like a giant smorgasbord of delicious goodies. Here, for instance, are some close-ups of a trilobite-bearing boulder on the south lateral moraine of the Athasbasca Glacier, Jasper National Park, Alberta. And what are these things? Any ideas?
30 December 2014
Skolithos in Gog quartzite, on the trail to Helen Lake
Some boulders seen on the trail to Helen Lake sported lovely sets of Skolithos trace fossils. Here are two boulders, with the perspective on the tubular paleo-vertical Skolithos burrows being “map view”: Another boulder, in the middle of the trail, showed them in a fine cross-sectional view: (click to enlarge substantially) It also included some interesting “ribbed” vertical traces that I didn’t recognize as familiar: …Diplocraterion, perhaps? Seems too “linear” …
29 December 2014
Intense bioturbation in limy mudrock on the trail to Helen Lake
Look at this! A whole boulder made of trace fossils. Three photos, each more progressively zoomed in than the last. Update: The @ichnologist identifies these as perhaps Thalassinoides.
25 December 2014
The stromatolites of Helen Lake 2: GigaPans
Posted this morning as my “Christmas gift” to blog readers in both photo and GigaPan form, here are the exquisite stromatolites of Helen Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta. link link link link link link link Finally, three other non-stromatolitic GigaPans from the site: One of Artomys Formation siltstone / shale interbeds… link …and two of Cirque Peak itself, showing its gorgeous internal folding: link link Happy holidays to you!
Callan Bentley is an assistant professor of geology at Northern Virginia Community College. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the 2018 National Association of Geoscience Teachers' James Shea Awardee. 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. Callan is a contributing editor at EARTH magazine and Past President of the Geological Society of Washington and the Geo2YC division of NAGT. He lives in the Fort Valley of Virginia.