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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 …
3 May 2019
Friday fold: Monarch Canyon
When a dike is subjected to shear, how does it deform? A guest Friday fold from Darrel Cowan of the University of Washington teaches a nice little lesson. Join the field trip in Monarch Canyon of Death Valley National Park…
14 December 2018
Friday fold: Titus Canyon Anticline
A guest Friday fold brings us to a position in the sky somewhere over eastern Death Valley National Park. Join us in contemplating the Titus Canyon Anticline.
26 October 2018
Friday folds: Mather Gorge Formation
It’s been a very Billy-Goaty week for me. Three times since Sunday afternoon, I’ve taken people to the Billy Goat Trail’s “A” loop in C&O Canal National Historical Park. On Tuesday and Thursday, it was my NOVA Physical Geology students. On Sunday, though, it was just my son and me. Good news! He helped me discover a new fold by exploring some new rock outcrops and climbing on them. 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 …
9 August 2017
A suite of new 3D models
A showcase of five new 3D digital models of awesome rock samples and outcrops, produced using Agisoft Photoscan.
28 July 2017
Friday fold: Big kink fold in Grinnell Formation
It’s Friday! How about we celebrate with a beautiful kink fold from a gorgeous national park?
5 May 2017
Friday fold: sea monster in stone
It’s Friday, the end of the workweek, but also the beginning of the celebration of folded rocks. Examine a particularly sinuous example from the buckled Cambrian limestones of Canada’s Kootenay National Park.
15 April 2017
Basement xenoliths in Catoctin Formation, Compton Pass
My son and I hiked Compton Peak in Shenandoah National Park this morning, and saw these two lovely examples of xenoliths. The example above is small, but it shows clearly the difference between the coarse, felsic basement rock (Mesoproterozoic granitoid, comprising the xenolith) and the surrounding fine-grained dark green metabasalt of the Catoctin Formation (Neoproterozoic). Here’s another, bigger example: These two Blue Ridge examples both illustrate the principle of relative …
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.