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18 October 2019
Friday folds from the Foreknobs Formation
TGIF! That’s my seven year old field assistant showing off the shape of a syncline in shale, siltstone, and fine sandstone of the Foreknobs Formation, a Devonian nearshore package of clastic sediment in the Valley & Ridge Province of eastern West Virginia. Want to see something freaky for Halloween? Photoshop can make it happen: Ewwww. Creepy! Another shot of the same fold, with a thick massive sand above a thicker …
18 March 2019
New discoveries in the Martinsburg Formation
A virtual field trip to examine some deepwater clastic sediments shed off the first phase of Appalachian mountain building, and deformed in the third phase. It’s a lovely day for a field trip to the late Ordovician!
12 October 2018
Friday fold: the Devil’s Backbone and its neighbor
It’s Friday; time to stretch our backbones out in anticipation of the weekend. Let’s look to a backboney-named Friday fold for a little inspiration… …And what’s that, just down the road? Another fold, in need of a catchy name…
17 August 2018
Friday folds: Moomaw Reservoir outcrops
Break out your paddle and sunhat. We’re going kayaking on Lake Moomaw, in search of Friday folds…
16 August 2018
A suite of deformational features in Lancaster limestones
In the Landisville Quarry, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, there is a quarry that cuts into Cambrian limestones. (The exact identity of these limestones is apparently a matter of some dispute, but that’s not going to stop us!) I visited the quarry in June on a field trip offered through the NAGT’s Eastern Section annual meeting. We witnessed multiple varieties of deformation there. First off, there was straight-up brittle extension, resulting in bedding-perpendicular …
15 July 2018
Chickie’s Rock, Pennsylvania
A virtual field trip to the deformed quartzites and metaconglomerates of Chickie’s Rock and Sam Lewis State Park in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
26 March 2018
Raider of the Lost Anticlines
A solo hike in search of anticlines yields new outcrops and good views!
14 March 2018
New media to show off exemplary features of the Devonian-aged Hampshire Formation along Corridor H, West Virginia
Last week, I was in Morgantown, West Virginia, to deliver a colloquium talk to the geology department at West Virginia University of geological visualization. The next day, I took some time on the way home to geologize a bit on the road called Corridor H, a gorgeous transect through the eastern Allegheny Plateau and western Valley & Ridge provinces. I focused that day on the Hampshire Formation, Foreknobs Formation, and …
23 January 2018
A kid and his slicks
On a family hike, Callan’s son finds some interesting smooth lines on a rock. What are they? What do they tell us? Tune in for a brief history of Appalachian geology.
29 September 2017
Friday folds: soft sediment deformation in thin sections of MTD sandstone
The Friday folds are small soft-sediment deformational features within a dismembered, folded sandstone (a “ploudin”) from a mass transport deposit from the latest Devonian of West Virginia.
Callan Bentley is an assistant professor of geology at Northern Virginia Community College. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the 2018 National Association of Geoscience Teachers' James Shea Awardee. 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. Callan served as a contributing editor at EARTH magazine for many years. He is Past President of the Geological Society of Washington and the Geo2YC division of NAGT. He lives in the Fort Valley of Virginia.