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3 September 2019
An unconformity at Bacon Cove, Newfoundland
At Bacon Cove in eastern Newfoundland, there is a nice example of an angular unconformity between Ediacaran and Cambrian sedimentary rocks.
16 August 2019
Friday fold: near Mistaya Lodge in the Canadian Rockies
Quick, awesome Friday fold here from the Canadian Rockies and Maggie Romuld: Maggie also posted another intriguing image of her hiking in the Canadian Rockies – and set geoTwitter abuzz with a discussion of whether she had captured load casts bulging out of the bottom side of a bed or stromatolites projecting upward from the top of a bed. Have a look & read the ensuing discussion here. Happy Friday!
9 August 2019
Friday fold: crumpled green metavolcanics from St. Anthony
The Friday fold erupted out of a volcano, completing the second part of its two stage cooling history, then later got folded and metamorphosed. It was found atop a high cliff near the northern Newfoundland town of St. Anthony.
2 August 2019
Friday fold: kinks in gritty phyllite near Lawn, Newfoundland
The ‘Friday fold’ shows gorgeous conjugate sets of kink bands transecting the plane of foliation in some phyllitic metasediments seen on the southern Burin Peninsula of Newfoundland.
27 July 2019
Offset limestone layers at Broom Point
Yesterday, I featured some folds from Broom Point, but there are also faults there. With the intriguing local limestone conglomerates providing easily-discernible marker beds, these apparently vertical faults are easy to spot. Here are three examples:
26 July 2019
Friday folds: Broom Point, Gros Morne National Park, Newfoundland
Here’s a look at some of the outcrops at Broom Point, within sight of the famous uplifted fjord called Western Brook Pond: The limestone beds here are Ordovician in age, and they dip to the east: In places through there are folds to be spotted in the beds:
12 July 2019
Friday fold: Wiltondale, Newfoundland
Here is an outcrop of folded limestone along route 430 in Newfoundland, inside Gros Morne National Park, just west of the crossroads called Wiltondale: A detailed look at the left antiformal portion of the outcrop: A zoomed-in examination of the rightmost part, where a goopy looking synform resides: Just down the way, a second outcrop shows another fold with the same sense of asymmetry, on a smaller scale: Happy Friday …
11 July 2019
A submarine slump complex at Sandy Cove, Newfoundland
Traveling in Newfoundland, Callan visits a seaside outcrop showing a Proterozoic submarine slump complex, overprinted by tectonic cleavage and weathered by the sea.
22 August 2018
Q&A, episode 5
A reader asks: “What is foliation and what makes it so important to the structure of rock?”
Callan answers with a lot of images of beautifully foliated rocks.
17 January 2018
Winter ichnology puzzle
Here’s a puzzler to warm up your chilly brain this Wednesday morning: Click to enlarge Figure out the story told by this set of imprints in the snow. The branch of science called ichnology studies the traces organisms leave behind. There’s a neat little story here. If you’ve got a guess, then you can check your answer by watching the video that this screenshot came from. It was posted on …
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 served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine for many years. He is Past President of the Geological Society of Washington and the Geo2YC division of NAGT. He lives in the Fort Valley of Virginia.