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11 August 2015
What do you see here?
Click to enlarge Noodle on that for a minute. I’ll post my answer later. No hints for now. Just examine what you see in the outcrop.
30 October 2014
Geomystery: what are these white lines?
Esteemed readership, I’ve got a mystery for you. What are these white lines, inclined consistently at a high angle to bedding? I picked up this sample below the “Wall of Death,” on the trail from Wapta Lake below Mount Wapta, en route to the Walcott Quarry of the Burgess Shale. The “zebra-striped” rock is of the Eldon Formation of the Cambrian section in Yoho National Park. At first, I thought …
22 January 2013
Fold mystery – UPDATED
What can you tell me about this new fold sample I recently acquired? Width of sample is 12.5 cm. The face you’re looking at was cut but not polished. Here’s a close up: With layering annotated, to highlight the disharmonic nature of these folds: Anyone have any guesses what’s going on here? ——————– UPDATE —————— Simon Wellings guessed it – this is a lasagna! I changed the color in Photoshop …
10 October 2012
Wo(G)E #357
Callan hosts the 357th installment of the popular satellite imagery / geologic search game “Where on (Google) Earth?”
23 August 2012
What’s going on here?
Take a crack at it. I’ll discuss it in full tomorrow later. The blue thing is the handle of a dry-erase marker, to give you a sense of scale.
9 August 2012
Orange oncolites from Consolation Lakes
Callan presents a mystery rock found in blocks of sedimentary rock on a talus slope near the Consolation Lakes in Banff National Park, Alberta. Are they orange oncolites? Or alien embryos? 🙂
18 April 2012
Outcrops whilst house-hunting
Lily and I went out to look at houses last weekend, and I couldn’t help but take some photos of cool rocks I saw along the route. See if you can identify / name / interpret all four: And here’s a bonus: Can anyone tell me what kind of bird built this diminutive nest?
30 March 2012
Friday fold: ice in Iceland
Searching for Peter Luffi’s latest Where On Google Earth? challenge, I found myself touring Iceland last week. While I didn’t find the strange comet-shaped feature he posted, I did find this: And zooming in a bit, to the high-contrast area in the center: This appears to be volcanic ash layers distorted by glacial flow and then melting/sublimation/weathering/erosion/ablation of the glacier. I posted something similar as the Friday fold almost a …
20 February 2012
Mystery rock
Here’s a mystery rock that’s just aching to have its identity be crowdsourced: I got these photos from Rick Diecchio of George Mason Univerisity, who got them from a local fellow who dug it up in his yard in Dale City, Virginia. Rick says: I was stumped at first, but the more I look at it, the more I think it’s a lightning strike into sand or more likely sandstone, …
16 January 2012
What I saw there
Yesterday, I showed you this picture and asked what you saw there: Today I’ll give you my impressions. This is an outcrop of sandstone of the Table Mountain Supergroup, seen on the beach in the idyllic village of Rooiels, on the eastern side of False Bay, north of Cape Hangklip, in South Africa.The field of view (scale purposely avoided) is about half a meter. Visually, it struck me as being …
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.