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You are browsing the archive for fossils Archives - Page 4 of 11 - Mountain Beltway.

17 February 2016

3D virtual sample of gastropod-rich Reynolds Limestone

Check this out: It’s a sample of the Reynolds Limestone, a member of the Mississippian-aged Mauch Chunk Formation, chock full of gastropod fossils. The image here is a 3D model made with Agisoft PhotoScan, a 3D model rendering program. The only input was a series of ~32 photos taken of the sample at various angles and orientations. Alan Pitts then posted it to his Sketchfab account, a place for displaying …

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27 January 2016

Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier

I’ve been doing some reading lately to get some foundational ideas established in my mind for my upcoming summer trip to Europe. This trip has three goals: (1) to gather key digital imagery (GigaPans, 360° photospheres, video) for curriculum to teach geoscience concepts and give students everywhere with particularly instructive geology in Iceland, Ireland, the UK, France, and Spain, (2) to scout out locations and logistics for a Summer 2017 …

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23 December 2015

Four new GIGAmacro images of sedimentary rocks

It’s been a week and a half since Mountain Beltway has seen any publishing action, given the overlapping timesucks of the AGU Fall Meeting and the end of the semester. But now I’m back in the Appalachian mountain belt, and my grades are all in, and I have time to think about indulgences like blogging again. Let me make up for it now with a suite of four new macro …

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1 December 2015

Which way’s up? Check cavity fills.

When snail shells are deposited in a bunch of sediment, they serve as tiny architectural elements, with a “roof” that protects their interiors. Any sediment mixed into the shell’s interior will settle out (more or less horizontally), and then there will be empty space (filled with water, probably) above that. As burial proceeds and diagenesis begins, that pore space may be filled with a mineral deposit, such as sparry calcite. …

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6 November 2015

“Making North America,” episode 2: Life

The PBS series NOVA has a new three-part series called “Making North America” that premiered last week. Hosted by the director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, Kirk Johnson, the series will explore the tectonic assembly of terranes that resulted in the bedrock of the continent, the panoply of diverse creatures that have dwelled here in the past, and the human prehistory of our continent. I was …

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25 October 2015

Cool fossils from the Clearville member of the Mahantango Formation

On Saturday, I took my historical geology class on their field trip out to Corridor H, West Virginia. We made a stop at the Mahantango Formation outcrop exposed on the eastbound exit ramp near Baker, and poked around there for fossils. These Devonian-aged siltstones are chock full of invertebrates including rugose corals, crinoids, articulate brachiopods, and even trilobites. Here are two of the best fossils we encountered there: A trilobite …

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20 August 2015

Stromatoporoids in a Devonian reef

Here are a few shots of a Devonian aged reef exposed in Mustoe, Virginia – one of the sites I visited this spring with GMU’s Rick Diecchio, when he led his sedimentology and stratigraphy trip there. At first, the outcrop made no sense to me – I kept searching for bedding, and failed to find it. Then, the reef interpretation clicked, and suddenly I didn’t “need” bedding any more… Stromatoporoids …

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15 August 2015

Paleobiology database survey request

Dear colleagues, My collaborators and I are exploring the potential of big science databases, like the Paleobiology Database (see below), to enhance geoscience education and research at all types of institutions. We’re very interested in learning who is and isn’t currently using this and other databases for education and research and why. This work is supported by an NSF DUE grant #1504588. If you could take about 10 minutes to …

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28 July 2015

Millboro Formation shale in outcrop and in hand sample

Another site from the GMU sedimentology field trip in April: An outcrop on Route 33 in Brandywine, West Virginia, showing the Millboro Formation. It’s mostly shale, with some intriguing sandstones, too. There are fossils and diagenetic carbonate nodules (concretions). Here’s the outcrop, the largest GigaPan I’ve taken so far (7.9 billion pixels): link The shale itself looks… like shale. It’s fine-grained, and dark (high carbon content, suggesting low oxygen levels …

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30 April 2015

Early Paleozoic fossils in Nealmont Formation, Germany Valley, West Virginia

Looking at Ordovician carbonates in Germany Valley, West Virginia, a few weeks ago on Rick Diecchio’s GMU sedimentology and stratigraphy course field trip: Lots and lots of brachiopods… Crinoid columnals mized with brachiopods: A set of coarsely-infilled trace fossils: Crinoid stem: Nice strophomenid brachiopod: Bryozoan? Receptaculid?

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