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6 April 2017
Stac Fada
The evidence for a meteorite impact origin for the Stoer Group’s Stac Fada member seems to stack up. Engage in a virtual field investigation on Mountain Beltway.
26 October 2016
Archean meteorite impact evidence from the Fig Tree Group in Barite Valley, Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa
What does the sedimentary record of a giant meteorite impact look like? Turns out it is full of tsunami breccia, fine ash, hail-like spherules, and a barium-rich ocean’s crystal precipitates. Join us in the Barberton Greenstone Belt of South Africa to learn more.
3 March 2014
Pieces of the beginning, via Chelyabinsk
A week ago today, I was in Tempe, Arizona, at Arizona State University, for a workshop on broadening participation (increasing diversity) in the geosciences. One of the neat things about ASU as a setting for this meeting is their enormous meteorite collection. I was particularly taken with the display of material from the extraordinary Chelyabinsk meteor detonation that occurred last year. ASU has pieces of glass from windows that were …
7 March 2013
Snow day aftermath
So we ended up getting 13 or 14 inches of snow yesterday. It was wet, and the temperature was right around freezing. As soon as it stopped falling, it started melting. One interesting aspect of this is that big wads of slushy snow were plopping off the trees every time a gust of wind came through. The structures these “plops” formed exhibit much of the same morphology of meteorite impact …
8 March 2010
Suevite from Vrederfort
One of my students brought this sample in the other day: She said her father collected it in South Africa. It was labeled “suevite.” I learned the term suevite about a year ago, while touring the USGS Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater coring project samples at the USGS Headquarters in Reston, Virginia. Wright Horton taught me that suevite is impact-generated melt that chills with other chunks of the pre-impact rock mixed …
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.