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11 December 2011
Just the thing for a winter day on the east coast…
… a brief glimpse of summer in the Rockies: [youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbRx7W1nYUk”] Footage shot south of Blacktail Butte, in Jackson Hole, looking west towards the Teton Range, in Wyoming. July 2011. Gros Ventre River terrace in the mid-ground.
28 September 2011
Roadside wonders of Route 287
Northern Colorado’s route 287 connects Fort Collins, Colorado with Laramie, Wyoming. Along its length, it displays roadcuts into Archean-aged basement complex. Two of these outcrops are featured in this post: one metamorphic (mostly), and a second igneous (mostly), with some intriguing polka-dotted plutons.
9 September 2011
Friday fold: just Kidding
You’re looking here at Mount Kidd, a peak in the Front Ranges of the Canadian Rockies that displays a tight anticline/syncline duo superimposed on the strata of the Rundle Group. Located on the west side of Highway 40, the Kananaskis Trail, south of the trans-Canada Highway, this mountain shows us what happens with Carboniferous-aged carbonates got squished and squeezed during the construction of the Canadian Rockies (what in the U.S. …
16 August 2011
Hiking to the Burgess Shale
Callan visits the Burgess Shale in British Columbia’s Yoho National Park on a guided tour. This photo-heavy post discusses the depositional setting of this world-famous Cambrian fossil deposit, the landscape along the hike, and (of course) the fossils themselves.
8 August 2011
Climbing Darton Peak
Callan embarks on an exhausting climb of a major summit in the Wyoming Bighorn mountains, a peak named in tribute of one of his geological heroes. Come join the trek to the top of Darton Peak!
5 August 2011
Friday fold: Crandell Mountain
Here’s one of the first things as you drive north from Chief Mountain in Glacier National Park, and cross the border into Alberta: The mountain in the middle is Crandell Mountain, and it looms to the north above the village of Waterton Lakes, but the lovely folds it displays are best viewed from a more easterly vantage. Wacky annotation: Sign at the overlook which discusses Crandell Mountain:
27 June 2011
Team Rockies 2011
Our field class visited the Museum of the Rockies yesterday. Here’s the full team!
13 June 2011
Rockies stratigraphic column checklist
I just drew up a little checklist for the different formations my Rockies students will be seeing next starting next week out in Montana: The original black and white images (two columns on two pages) come from Self-Guided Field Trips Near Bozeman (1982), by Stephan G. Custer, Donald L. Smith, Molly Walker, and 1982’s crop of geology graduate students at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. This stratigraphic column, which …
24 November 2010
How many structures I saw here
Yesterday, I asked for you to evaluate this rock sample of the Belt supergroup and tell me how many structures (both primary and tectonic) that you could identify in it. Thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion. Here’s my annotated copy of that photo for comparison:
23 November 2010
How many structures can you see here?
Last summer, in Bonner, Montana on my Rockies field course, I took the students to see some nice exposures of Belt Supergroup strata on the side of the road. We were keeping our eyes peeled for both primary structures (i.e., patterns in the sediment that formed at the time of their deposition) and secondary, or tectonic, structures (i.e., those that formed as a result of the rock being strained under …
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.