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8 August 2011
Horned lizard
Here’s a cute little feller that we spotted in the Green River Basin of Wyoming last week, whilst checking out the Green River Formation oil shales at the White Mountain escarpment, as well as adjacent Boar’s Tusk volcanic neck and distant Killpecker Dunes. Though sometimes called “horny toads” (I myself am fond of this name), it’s not really a toad. It’s a lizard.
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!
4 August 2011
Rills for thrills
Regularly-spaced erosional rills on tailings/road fill at a uranium mining operation in central Wyoming.
2 August 2011
Receptaculid at Medicine Wheel
On the way to visit the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, in a road-bottom outcrop of the Bighorn Dolomite (Ordovician), Callan finds a lovely receptaculid fossil (colloquially known as a “sunflower coral,” though it’s not a coral at all).
1 August 2011
My week
This week is “Wyoming Energy Resources field trip” week! Day Start End Destination August 1st Sheridan, WY Lander, WY Gas Hills Uranium District August 2nd Lander, WY Lander, WY Green River Basin Oil Shale and South Pass/ Atlantic City Mining District August 3rd Lander, WY Newcastle, WY Smith Ranch-Highland Uranium ISR Mine and Mill near Glenrock, WY August 4th Newcastle, WY Sundance, WY Osage Oil Field and Bear Lodge Mountains …
25 July 2011
Gigapan of Cascade Canyon
To follow up to my Cascade Canyon post, here’s a gigapan of the scene:
10 July 2011
Cascade Canyon
Following up on Friday’s fold, I wanted to share a few other images from our hike last week in Cascade Canyon of Grand Teton National Park. Lots of cool exposures of Archean basement rock there. Folds in gneissic banding: Big, angular mafic blocks in a felsic soup: Swarm of granite dikes on a mountainside: Asymmetric feldspathic porphyroclast in amphibolite, with apparent reaction rim: Boudinage and an isoclinal fold: Ptygmatic fold: …
8 July 2011
Friday fold: basement waves
Spotted this in Cascade Canyon, in the Tetons of Wyoming, last weekend: Nice asymmetric antiforms and synforms in the gneissic layering of the Archean basement rocks exposed there. Also, we saw a bull moose. More on that later on, when I get more time.
5 July 2011
Varves from Yellowstone Lake
The other day, driving south through Yellowstone on our way to the Tetons, I stopped to give my students the obligatory look over Yellowstone Lake’s West Thumb, looking east towards the snowcapped Absaroka Range in the distance. But in addition to a lovely view and a few birds, we found something really cool… Those are varves, seasonally-laminated couplets of sediment (light = summer; dark = winter) that are made of …
1 July 2011
Friday fold: west Bighorn monocline
While out in the field with Butch Dooley last week, making major discoveries like I do, I was very impressed with the landscape-scale west Bighorn monocline, which takes formerly horizontal Madison limestone and skews it to a westward dip where the mountains end and the intermontane basin begins. It’s totally sweet. Check it out in photo form and gigapan, too.
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.