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9 August 2013
Friday fold: four more Proterozoic folds from the Laramie Range
To this and this, add these: Some interesting fold shapes here. Bob Bauer, who took me to this site, interprets these as interference patterns, evidence of two generations of folding: Happy Friday – for me, there’s only a week of summer break left, and then a week from today, I’ll be back at work.
2 August 2013
Friday fold: 2Z
Two Z folds from the Proterozoic rocks of the Laramie Range, Wyoming – you get two since I’ve been so delinquent about blogging over the past month.
28 June 2013
Friday fold: Summer sample #1
First sample of the summer – a new “pocket fold” showing Paleoproterozoic deformation in the northern Laramie Range, Wyoming.
27 June 2013
Paleoproterozoic dikes in Archean granite, Laramie Range, Wyoming
At Morton Pass, where highway 34 crosses the crest of the Laramie Range, you can see a nice set of (younger) mafic dikes cutting (older) granite/gneiss basement complex. The pink stuff is Archean; the black stuff is Paleoproterozoic; around 2 billion years old. Click to enlarge I got to check out this outcrop on Tuesday with colleagues from the University of Missouri and the University of Wyoming. Deformation in the …
11 June 2013
Weathering rinds
Some cobbles from Wyoming, showing lovely weathering rinds: …And here’s another, with a “slice” off the front. It reminds me of a slice through a sushi roll!
7 June 2013
Friday fold: South Pass City, Wyoming
Two summers ago, my wife (then my very new wife) Lily and I participated in a two-week workshop for teachers on the energy resources of Wyoming. We also indulged in a visit to a mineral resource site: South Pass City, a site in the southern Wind River Uplift that was the second oldest incorporated town in Wyoming (after Cheyenne). It was a gold mining site, and today it is preserved …
2 January 2013
Upturned Paleozoic strata on Highway 16, Bighorns, Wyoming
Here’s a terrific outcrop to start off the new year at Mountain Beltway. We’re back in the Bighorns of Wyoming here, on highway 16, traversing the southern portion of the range en route from Buffalo to South Pass City. Click to enlarge Annotated, expanded, and Easter-egg-embedded: Click to enlarge From a different perspective (uphill a tad, looking north), consider this GigaPan I shot at the time: link The best part …
1 January 2013
Vulture petroglyph from Castle Gardens, Wyoming
Happy new year! Time marches on – and here’s a reminder of times past… Check this out – a couple of what appear to be vultures, etched by native Americans into the siltstone at Castle Gardens, Wyoming: Diameter of the outer circle is probably 1.5 or 2 feet. My annotated (and generally embelished) version: I love the “hunched” shoulders on these birds, and their expressionless faces. What’s the small inner …
28 December 2012
Friday fold: Bighorn monocline
Happy Friday! The last one of 2012, in fact! To celebrate, check out this monocline on the western flank of the Bighorn Range in the Rockies of Wyoming: Click to enlarge Annotated. Check out those fine hogbacks! Previously, we also saw this same structure in this GigaPan: link
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 …
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.