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25 December 2012
Stromatolites of the Green River Formation
The summer before last (2011), I spent some time in Wyoming on an energy resources field trip run by Sheridan College, and one stop we made was to look at “oil shale” (really kerogen-rich marlstone) of the Green River Formation, an Eocene lake deposit in southwestern Wyoming. The oil shale is exposed on the east side of the White Mountain escarpment in the Green River Basin. Here’s the view to …
3 May 2012
Big old vesicles!
Today, for your viewing pleasure, I offer you: A series of big honkin’ gas pockets in a 615 ka basaltic lava flow in the Owens Valley of California. This same lava flow has been featured here before, since it imparted a lovely contact metamorphism to the alluvial fan over which it erupted. These things are weird – they’re all about the same size and the same shape (and the same …
27 October 2011
Pavement outcrops of strained Seine conglomerate
Picking up from the astonishing first couple of outcrops we saw of strained Seine Group metaconglomerate from the boundary between the Wabigoon and Quetico sub-provinces of the Superior Craton, our group moved on down the road. It was lovely clear fall weather near Fort Frances, and shockingly warm. Our third stop of the morning was a lunch stop atop a great “pavement” outcrop of the same strained metaconglomerate, showing different …
26 October 2011
Strained Timiskaming-type metaconglomerates from Ontario
Why are these geologists all over these rocks? Because, gentle readers, these are some seriously cool rocks. The geologists are all participants on a pre-GSA-annual-meeting field trip to the Superior Craton, a chunk of ancient crust at the “nucleus” of the North American continent. The rocks are syn-tectonic volcaniclastic conglomerates of the Seine Group. They are Archean sediments very similar to modern day conglomerates – full of cobbles and pebbles …
19 August 2011
Glaciofluvial outcrop annotated
Callan’s answer to the riddle of the mystery outcrop is revealed. Spoiler: the glacier did it.
29 March 2011
Tillite in outwash
Hoo boy. This one made me yelp… While on the glacial geology of western Pennsylvania trip last Saturday, we visited a gravel quarrying operation. The operators were extracting gravel from a glacial lake delta deposit, and it was full of glacial outwash — sediments washed out from the melting front of the Erie lobe of the Laurentide ice sheet. We were there to look at the Pleistocene features, but several …
6 March 2011
French Thrust
That title sounds kinky, right? Well, calm down. I’m behind the curve on the latest Accretionary Wedge (as I was for the one before that), but here’s a quick image to join the parade of geologic photos that Ann is hosting. While it’s not my favorite, it’s definitely a favorite, more by virtue of the geology it shows than the aesthetic qualities of the image: That is an outcrop of …
29 December 2010
GoSF9: Pleistocene dunes
The penultimate episode of Callan’s more-than-a-week-long series on the geology of the San Francisco region: today we briefly visit the sand dunes that covered San Francisco Peninsula during the Pleistocene.
17 October 2010
Birthing a litter of drumlins
Quite appropriately, Glacial Till won the new the latest edition of “Where on (Google) Earth?”, hosted here yesterday. The location I picked is the subject of a new paper by Mark Johnson and colleagues appears in the current issue of Geology (October 2010). It shows a place in Iceland where a piedmont-style outlet glacier called Múlajökull is pooching out to the southeast from the Hofsjökull ice cap. Here’s a more …
7 March 2010
Giant ground sloths
In the American Museum of Natural History: These mylodontids reminded me of Puerto Natales…
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.