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23 January 2012
An ancient delta at the Three Rondawels?
Here’s a look at what you see if you go to the Three Rondawels viewpoint above the Blyde River Nature Reserve in northern South Africa: A lovely scene. The three mega-hoodoos on the left are the eponymous “rondawels” (pronounced ron-da-vulz), which is the Afrikaans word for a round hut. These erosional remnants are more or less cylindrical and of the same dimensional ratio as the huts, so this name seems …
19 January 2012
Mudcracks
Here’s two nice examples of mudcracks I saw used as paving stones in South Africa:
17 January 2012
The ventifacts of Rooiels
Site of the mystery photo I posted over the weekend, the beach at Rooiels (“red grass” in Afrikaans), South Africa, is a lovely place… Located on the western side of False Bay a tad north of Cape Hangklip, Rooiels is somewhat famous in my mind because the Guru of Gigapan, Illah Nourbakhsh, spoke glowingly of it at the November 2010 Gigapixel Imaging for Science conference in Pittsburgh. When I finally …
16 January 2012
What I saw there
Yesterday, I showed you this picture and asked what you saw there: Today I’ll give you my impressions. This is an outcrop of sandstone of the Table Mountain Supergroup, seen on the beach in the idyllic village of Rooiels, on the eastern side of False Bay, north of Cape Hangklip, in South Africa.The field of view (scale purposely avoided) is about half a meter. Visually, it struck me as being …
14 January 2012
Beach squiggles
One day in South Africa, Lily and I walked across Noordhoek Beach… Along the way, I noticed these little squiggles of sand: folded tube shapes. I decided I should photograph a few to share with Tony Martin, since he’s into trace fossils along coastal areas. Anyone have any idea what made these diminutive sculptures of sand?
12 January 2012
Rock hyrax
The charming rock hyrax, a cuddly-looking fellow whose nearest living relative is the elephant: This is in the coastal town of Hermanus, a lovely place for whale-watching, in season. We were there at the wrong season, but the hyrax provided a mammal sighting that made us happy. The little fellow seemed to really be enjoying the sun on his seaside perch… A while later, we met a second one coming …
11 January 2012
Splotchy Liesgang banding
At the Three Rondavels overlook in the northern Drakensburg Mountains of South Africa, I saw this chunk of quartzite with a peculiar variety of Liesegang banding (iron oxide staining of the rock by groundwater): A short distance away, I found another example: In one key way, I liked this second example better, even though the Liesegang banding wasn’t as well expressed here. The improvement is that it also shows bedding, …
10 January 2012
African penguins
African penguins (formerly “jackass penguins”) at Boulders Beach, Simon’s Town, South Africa:
9 January 2012
‘Bugs’ I saw in South Africa
Here is a collection of creepy-crawlies I saw in South Africa: Big grasshopper/katydid orthopteran: Another big orthopteran (“locust”?), obviously beefier than the previous one: Beach roach (Blattodea): Mating true bugs (hemipterans): Here’s a big snail, too: And best of all? This solpugid! Solpugids are arachnids, but they are not spiders. Along with vinegaroons, scorpions, pseudoscorpions, tailless whip-scorpions, ticks and harvestmen (“daddy-longlegs”), solpugids roam the world as effective predators but I’ve …
8 January 2012
Mammals I saw in South Africa
Elephant shrew Epauletted fruit bat Savannah baboon Vervet monkey Scrub hare Tree squirrel Woodland (?) dormouse Unidentified rat Cape porcupine (as roadkill only) Black-backed jackal Wild dog Banded mongoose Dwarf mongoose Small-spotted genet Spotted hyena African wild cat Lion Leopard African elephant Rock hyrax (dassie) Plains zebra Square-lipped (white) rhinoceros Common warthog Hippopotamus Giraffe African buffalo Greater kudu Bushbuck Waterbuck Blue wildebeest Bontebok Impala Springbok Kilpspringer Steenbok Common duiker Cape …
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.