Diatom time

Today’s EPOD is of a diatom. Seems like as good an excuse as any to share a couple photos of a big brass diatom sculpture from the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Finger for scale, but not really, since the sculpture isn’t to scale.

Folds of New York

Thursday is ‘fold day’ here at Mountain Beltway. Let’s take a look at some folds I saw last weekend in New York City. We’ll start with a bunch seen in the Manhattan Schist in Central Park. Here’s an example of the foliation in the schist. It’s got finer-grained regions and coarser, schistier regions with big [...]

Pyrolusite on a pterosaur

All the photos I posted over the weekend here were via iPhone, and hence not particularly high-quality, despite their excellent geological content. Now I’ve downloaded the photos from my real camera, and have a few good ones to show. Here’s a succession of photos of the same specimen of Pterodactylus longirostrus, each progressively more zoomed [...]

Rusty weathering rind

On a granite block

Giant ground sloths

In the American Museum of Natural History: These mylodontids reminded me of Puerto Natales…

Where I am today

Graphics by USGS, after Schuberth, 1967.

Travertine nubbins on a bridge

Another in the Geology Of Central Park series…

Plumose structure

Propagation direction: upper left towards lower right:

Erratic

!!!

Glacial striations, southern Central Park

New York City has some cool geology: Paleozoic metamorphics scraped by Pleistocene glaciers.