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6 October 2017
Friday fold: recumbent isoclinal folds in Saruratown Mtn window, NC
Here’s a cool fold pair that rolled through my Twitter feed today: 2nd day Appalachian field trip. Recumbent isoclinal folds on a clear morning at Sauratown Mtns window NC pic.twitter.com/sHkmbp6roh — Joe Allen (@CU_in_the_field) October 6, 2017 Joe Allen gave me permission to share it with you here. Here’s the photo with bedding traced out (by me) in yellow: Happy Friday, all!
14 January 2013
Monday macrobug: Orange wasp
Saw this one on the Neoacadian Inner Piedmont field trip before GSA in the fall… I guess it’s something of a break from tradition to show you a bug from any place other than my yard, but this one’s pretty enough to justify the excursion… Yes, that’s the Walker Top Granite that it’s resting on.
14 December 2012
Friday fold: the folded xenoliths of Duck Creek
On Duck Creek (Ellendale, NC quadrangle), you can see folded xenoliths within the Toluca Granite (383 Ma, 378 Ma, or 368 Ma, depending on which mineral you ask). The granite there contains xenoliths that contain pre-exisiting fabrics and structures, and we stopped at Duck Creek on the pre-GSA-Charlotte field trip I took to the Neoacadian Inner Piedmont to check out these xenoliths. Here are some less impressive xenoliths, strung out …
16 November 2012
Friday fold: Neoacadian Inner Piedmont trip, part IV: Migmatitic metagraywacke
The Friday fold comes from a stop on the “Neoacadian Inner Piedmont” field trip that Callan attended prior to the GSA meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, last week.
15 November 2012
Neoacadian Inner Piedmont trip, part III: Mesozoic cataclasite
Quartzite, shattered and healed and shattered again and again and again. It’s cataclasite, seen in the North Carolina Piedmont and inferred to be Mesozoic in age due to its brittle style of deformation.
13 November 2012
Neoacadian Inner Piedmont trip, part II: more Walker Top
Today, I’ve got a batch of additional photos of the Walker Top Granite to share, variably mylonitized (sheared out under ductile conditions)… Nice garnets in some spots: Delta porphyroclast: Lovely sheared-out rocks…
11 November 2012
Fence lizard
It wasn’t all rocks and games on the Neoacadian Inner Piedmont trip. I also saw a lizard:
9 November 2012
Friday fold: Boomer Falls
The Friday fold is seen at one of the stops on Callan’s pre-GSA-Charlotte field trip: a small waterfall in North Carolina’s Inner Piedmont.
8 November 2012
Neoacadian Inner Piedmont trip, part I: the Walker Top
Check out these lovely images (mouth-watering, even) of the protomylonitic and mylonitic Walker Top Granite of North Carolina’s Inner Piedmont. There’s also some views of the field trip participants and scenery.
4 November 2012
Animated GIF of the Walker Top Granite
Here’s one of the cool rocks I saw on my pre-GSA-Charlotte field trip to the Neoacadian Inner Piedmont field trip: the protomylonitic Walker Top Granite (~366 Ma crystallization), which was deformed as the terrane it was intruded into got shoved up and to the west (and perhaps the southwest!). Here’s an animated GIF I made to show off one particularly striking bit of float: The rock is dominated by big …
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.