You are browsing the archive for alberta Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Mountain Beltway.
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 …
13 December 2013
Friday fold: Kink banding in Purcell limestones, Crypt Lake trail
Hiking up to Crypt Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada, you can see some sweet stromatolites, and folds, too. But it’s not only that – you can also find some decent kink bands in those strata, too! These kink bands will serve as our Friday fold, on this Crypt-Lake-o-centric week. Here’s a second, slightly more oblique shot: Have a great Friday!
11 December 2013
Stromatolites along the trail to Crypt Lake
On the trail up to Crypt Lake in Waterton Lakes National Park (southernmost Alberta, Canada), there’s a ‘traditional’ hiking trail, and then an intense ledge on a glacial headwall that you must teeter along, including scaling your body up into and through a person-sized tunnel! Right at the transition between the two “phases” of the hike are some boulders of Mesoproterozoic Belt limestones (Helena/Siyeh Formation??) bearing many, many, many stromatolites. …
10 December 2013
The trail to Crypt Lake
Today, I’d like to share some images with you from Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada. This is the Crypt Lake hike, a popular (but grueling) hike in the park. It starts at the Waterton Marina, across Emerald Bay from the Prince of Wales Hotel. Mount Crandell and the Bear’s Hump are visible in the distance. This image can be made much bigger if you click on it. Click …
6 December 2013
Friday fold: Turtle Mountain and the Frank Slide
The Friday fold can be found this week at Turtle Mountain, Alberta, where it triggered a massive landslide.
6 September 2013
Friday fold: Kananaskis Trail, Alberta
The Friday fold returns to Canada this week, with a look at an internally crumpled mountain along Alberta’s Kananaskis Trail…
20 February 2013
Crazy veins
Callan & his students visit an outcrop on the Icefields Parkway in Alberta, showing a variety of white veins cutting dark rock.
15 February 2013
Friday fold: clear evidence of the work of the Intelligent Folder
Yesterday’s post showcasing my conversational critique of Intelligent Design got a lot of attention, including tweet love from @NCSE and @BadAstronomer, and a blog post at Pharyngula. So, at the risk of overkill, I decided to have a little fun with the Friday fold… Check out this fold that I found in float of Purcell (Belt) Supergroup limestone last summer, in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta: Such beautiful symmetry! This …
5 December 2012
Estemmenosuchus
Slightly annotated photo of a Permian therapsid skull on display in the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. Another photo of this same skull is here. This reptile needs an orthodontist.
27 November 2012
Good lighting on invertebrate fossils
Good lighting on these fossils at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, eh? You’ve got a batch of brachiopods mixed with crinoid columnals and little cornucopia-shaped rugose corals. Maybe some sponge spicules in there, too… This is a great rock because (a) it’s full of well-preserved fossils in a fine-grained matrix, and (b) it’s been weathered so that the fossils poke out in high relief. But the way the …
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.