Friday, October 30, 2009

An interesting find

I found myself driving up the road past my mother's house and I spotted an unique outcrop at a local swimming hole. Even though I had driven and run past this outcrop many, many times, I just noticed it for the first time as a geologist. It is possible it was exposed from hillside runoff during a flood event that occurred in 2006. Take a look.




As you can see, the exposed rock to the left of the picture is tilting back into the hillside while the rock to the right is still positioned horizontal. The distance between the two exposed outcrop is a matter of a meter or two. Here's a closer look:




Unfortunately, the outcrop itself is pretty inaccessible. Recent rain events have flooded the river to the point where crossing it will be risky and the top of the ridge is private property used for hunting. This is definitely on my list of outcrops to check out.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Phytoplankton for everyone!

I found this pretty cool article on geology.com and it reminded me of a Dan Brown book I read awhile back. If you like science like I do, then you'll be able to focus more on the "what ifs" about the book than the writing. Deception Point turns out to be pretty neat-o if you're interested in sciences.