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8 August 2023
Three new videos from Montana
I spent several enjoyable weeks in Montana last month, and shot some new video content there for my YouTube channel. Here are three videos that may be of interest to readers of this blog:
28 July 2023
Friday fold/fauxld duet from Glacier National Park
When is an apparent anticline not an fold? Find out on this week’s edition of the Friday Fold…
14 July 2023
Friday fauxld: Sacagawea Cirque
Found this beautiful cobble while hiking Sacagawea Peak with my family yesterday, in Montana’s Bridger Range. It’s not actually folded as much as it appears to be; the laminations are slab like and nearly parallel to the surface in this photo, with the cobble surface sectioning them obliquely to produce this pattern.
9 December 2022
Pillbug tracks in ash from Mt. St. Helens
Reader Nancy Weidman (who supplied the Wind River boudinaged basaltic dike images from earlier in the week) sent me this interesting note: Your ichnoanalogue post reminds me of the insect or pillbug tracks I found in Mt. St. Helens ash deposited in Missoula, Montana. At least some of the tracks, if I recall correctly, ended in dead bugs, presumably dead after its breathing tubes clogged with ash. No fossils from …
30 July 2022
Well-preserved mudcracks in Belt argillite, Glacier National Park, Montana
Fresh from the field, Callan shares a quintet of beautifully preserved desiccation cracks in Mesoproterozoic Belt Supergroups sediments, exposed in Montana’s geological gem, Glacier National Park.
17 July 2020
Friday fold: Sandy Hollow from the air
The Friday fold is spied below, in the Montanan landscape near Dillon, from an airplane high above…
22 May 2020
Friday fold: Anticline in Glacier National Park
Some web research led to a serendipitous discovery and further exploration. Wherever you’re sheltering in place, you don’t have a view that’s this grand. Slip away for a few moments to the high country of Montana’s Glacier National Park, where an anticline may be seen in the towering cliffs…
10 May 2018
Last Stand, by Michael Punke
A reader of this blog recently recommended Michael Punke’s Last Stand. I thoroughly enjoyed his novel The Revenant, and so last week I started the audiobook version of the nonfictional Last Stand (2007). Last Stand is subtitled “George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West.” Prior to reading it, I knew little of Grinnell, save that he was a conservationist, and that he …
3 November 2017
Friday fold: More kinks from Glacier National Park
This Friday, let’s return to Glacier National Park. Here are some folds in Helena Formation limestone: Can’t see them? Fair enough – the point of maximum inflection appears to be hidden behind a snow-filled gully: But in addition to that big fold, there are several kink bands in there, too. Let’s zoom in: Here they are: Zooming in further, on the right-most of these kink bands: …And here, with the …
20 October 2017
Friday fold: Kink folds in Glacier National Park, part II
Over the summer, I treated you to a great big kink fold in the sedimentary rocks of Glacier National Park. Here’s another set: Did you see both of them in that first picture? – one bigger down below, one smaller up above. Both kink bands dip to the left. Let’s zoom in on the upper one: There’s more where this came from – stay tuned for more…. and in 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.