Siccar Point is unquestionably one of the most important geological sites in the understanding of geological time. It was here in 1778 that James Hutton, John Playfair, and James Hall contemplated the immensity of time needed to produce vertically oriented rocks overlain by gently-dipping rocks. The concept of geological time is so fundamental to the…
Central California Tectonics Field Trip
I took part in a central California tectonics field trip a few weeks ago that the Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) sponsored. Tanya Atwater and Art Sylvester, professors emeriti at the University of California Santa Barbara, Department of Earth Sciences, led the field trip. During the field trip, we made numerous stops between Los Angeles…
Hiking to Glacier National Park’s Grinnell Glacier
A few days ago I did the hike to Grinnell Glacier, one of the iconic glaciers in Glacier National Park. The glacier lies within the Swiftcurrent drainage area, in the northeastern part of the park. The hike, at least the way I did it, is about 11.6 miles round trip. It is possible to catch…
Tertiary Geology and Paleontology in the Gravelly Range, Southwestern Montana
A part of my recent geological field work includes working on high elevation Tertiary strata in the Gravelly Range, southwestern Montana. The Gravelly Range is located in southwest Montana, about 10 miles southwest of Ennis, Montana. For some background on this area and what my field work is about, see an older blog that I…
Canadian Rockies – Alberta Badlands Geology Guidebook
The Association for Women Geoscientists (AWG) published their first geology field trip guidebook in late 2016 and it is now available for sale to the general public. This guideboook is a collection of geology road logs, associated geological information, and local cultural history of areas within the Canadian Rockies and the Alberta Badlands. The following…
Montana Writers Advocate For Protection of Our Public Lands
I love living in Montana, but some days are just better than other days. This is one of those “better” days. This morning I checked my media feeds to learn that more than forty Montana writers have come together to write about their support for protecting our public lands and to also endorse Montana’s Special…
Dinosaur Mummy found in Alberta’s Oil Sands
A nodosaur, approximately 112-110 million years old, was found in the Alberta oil sands March 21, 2011. The dinosaur is basically a mummy, with fossilized skin and gut contents intact. Luckily, the heavy-equipment operator and his supervisor knew that what was being unearthed at Suncor’s Millennium Mine that amazing day in March was unusual. It…
Guatemalan volcanic eruption drone video
Scientists from the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge used a drone to video an eruption of one of Guatemala’s active stratovolcanoes, Volcan de Fuego. The volcano is part of the Central America volcano arc and is one of three large stratovolcanoes close to Guatemala’s former capital, Antigua. The drone flew 3,700 m over Volcan de Fuego to…
Steelhead Fishing Along the Western Idaho Suture Zone
I took a break from writing a paper on Tertiary volcanic tuffs in southwestern Montana a few days ago to go on our yearly steelhead fishing trip on the South Fork of the Clearwater River in Idaho. Steelhead are amazing fish in that they are ocean-going rainbow trout that spend two years in the ocean,…
One Of The Largest Icebergs On Record In The Making
A very large crack is forming in the Larsen C Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. The crack is up to 1,500 feet wide and will most likely generate one of the largest icebergs on record. Only 6.4 miles of ice are keeping the ice sheet from calving off an iceberg that is basically the size of…
Are All World Maps Wrong?
Geoawesomeness got my attention today by featuring a You Tube video done by Vox folks a few months ago. The Vox video points out that basically all world maps are wrong in how projections of land masses are variously shown. Aleks Buczkowski from Geoawesomeness gave a lead-in to the Vox video in his posting on it by…
Winter Trekking Through Yellowstone’s Thermal and Glacial Features
Some winter days in Yellowstone National Park are so amazing with clear blue skies and sparkling snow that they just take your breathe away. Luckily enough, I just experienced several of these kinds of days which I packed full of cross country skiing, snowshoeing, and animal watching. One of the groomed trails that held a…
Cenozoic Sequence Stratigraphy of Southwestern Montana
Much of my research has been focused on Cenozoic sequence stratigraphy of continental basin-fill in southwestern Montana. This approach to the stratigraphy of continental deposits has facilitated correlation of stratigraphic units both within and among the various basins of this area. I recently gave a talk about my work in this area at Montana Tech…
Global Earthquakes 2001 to 2015: NOAA Science on a Sphere Animation
NOAA’s SOS data center has a new earthquake data set animation for events that occurred from 2001 through 2015. The Science on a Sphere’s animation shown above is described on their web site as: This animation shows every recorded earthquake in sequence as they occurred from January 1, 2001, through December 31, 2015, at a…
Odyssey to the Anthropocene
I came across a good posting on Carbon Brief that gives a succinct historical background for designating the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, and thought I’d pass it on. As defined by the English Oxford Living Dictionaries, the Anthropocene is: Relating to or denoting the current geological age, viewed as the period during which human…