Random Geology Pic - Grand Canyon National Park from the Air

Like the recent Dinosaur National Monument pic I posted earlier, I seem lucky enough to catch some of America's best National Parks while flying overhead. Here are a few of Grand Canyon National Park. The flight was from Salt Lake City to Phoenix back in October of 2016, which happened to perfectly line up with the Grand Canyon. I highlighted the Grand Canyon in my Geology of the National Parks Through Pictures a little while ago. 

Aerial view of the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon is a massive erosional feature formed through the movement of the Earth's crust known as Plate Tectonics. Here, we are mainly focused on the interaction of the North American plate and the Farallon plate. 

Subduction of the Farallon Plate below North America. Image courtesy of the NPS.

Off the west coast of North America used to be a plate called the Farallon Plate. It was being subducted (going beneath) North America for several millions of years until the majority of the plate had been completely subducted. This recently subducted plate was rather hot and therefore pushed upwards on the overriding North American Plate. 

The Farallon Plate below North America. Image courtesy of Written in Stone. 

As the Farallon Plate traveled below North America, the upward force of the hot plate pushed up a section of North America known as the Colorado Plateau. Surface features, such as rivers, are then locked in place as the ground surface moves upwards, the rivers start to erode more and more downwards. This creates features such as the Grand Canyon and things called "entrenched meanders" where formerly meandering rivers are locked into place as they are now eroding downwards in that meander shape. 

An entrenched meander of the Colorado River

The Colorado Plateau has several entrenched meanders, besides just the one in the image above including at Natural Bridges National Monument, which I covered a little while ago.

View of the Grand Canyon.

As erosion within the canyon deepened, it also widened. This created one of the largest canyons on Earth seen here at the Grand Canyon. Although one of the largest canyons on Earth, the Grand Canyon is not THE largest. There are several larger canyons, specifically in areas where similar processes are occurring by the significant uplift of the ground surface, such as along the Himalayan Mountains. 

More far off view of the Grand Canyon.

Random Geology Pic - The Dinosaur National Monument Plunging Anticline

Here's a random geology picture that I came across on my phone from 2016. It is of Dinosaur National Monument from an airplane as I was flying over. From this angle you can really see the structure of the whole park with a great view of Split Mountain, the mountain in the middle of the photo.

Split Mountain is a geological structure known as a "plunging anticline". An anticline is when you fold the rocks into an "A" like shape (imagine bending a book with the outside edges bent downwards). Looking at the surface of the Earth with an anticline, the oldest rocks are in the center of the fold and the rocks progressively get younger in complimentary strips moving outward from the central fold axis. In the image below, C is older than B is older than A. 

An anticline fold. 

If you were to think of an anticline fold as something like a jelly roll, then you tipped that whole thing into the the Earth, you would produce what is called a "Plunging Anticline". Here the youngest rocks go from oldest to youngest along the direction of the plunge. 

A plunging anticline.

Here D is the oldest on the surface with C, B, and A all progressively getting younger in the direction of the fold. (Same colors and letters as in the anticline photo.)

In Dinosaur National Monument, the plunging anticline is here running left to right (west to east) and is plunging towards the left (west). If we look at a geological map of the area, the ages of the rock units will be able to confirm that with. In this instance the oldest rocks should be on the right (eastern and upper) part of the plunge and the youngest rocks on the left (western and lower) part of the plunge. 

Rock units outlined and labeled in Dinosaur National Monument

Although it is hard to tell, the labels have two parts. The first 1 or 2 letters stands for the age of the rock unit. Here is also a better geological map of Dinosaur National Monument. 

• "M" = Mississippian
• "PP" = Pennsylvanian
• "P" = Permian
• "Tr" = Triassic
• "J" = Jurassic
• "K" = Cretaceous

The above order that I wrote them in is the order they appear in from right to left, and if you look at the geologic timescale below you can see that the Mississippian is the oldest in that list (~325 million years old (Ma)) to the Cretaceous, which is the youngest in the series that I listed (~66 Ma).  

So, as I was saying, the aerial photo here is a great view of Split Mountain at Dinosaur National Monument, which also happens to be a plunging anticline. 

Random Geology Pictures - The 2017 Solar Eclipse

In my ever present attempt to be right on top of things, I am only now able to post about my attempt to document the August 21st, 2017 solar eclipse. I figured since today was the two year anniversary of the event, I would take that as a cue to get this up. I should start off by noting: you NEVER look at a solar eclipse straight on. It can burn out your eyeballs (or something to that effect), so you want to have a work around. Either a solar filter or a pinhole camera (as described below) work best.

Overall, I have been getting better at taking pictures of the eclipses and that is partially because I have been using better equipment. Here are my previous attempts (if you scroll through all my "Eclipse" tags).

I started off by buying a solar filter for my camera. A cheap alternative to buying a whole solar lens. And although it may not have been perfect, I think it actually worked really well for a fraction of the price.

Here is our Canon DSLR all rigged up with the solar filter.

Don't worry, we also had our Solar Sunglasses. Here is my daughter checking out the eclipse with me.

Selfie with my glasses and the sun at the start of the eclipse.

They worked really well, but taking pictures through them was a bit difficult.

One thing to note about the Solar Eclipse. There are ways to watch the eclipse where you make a pinhole camera. Basically put a small hole through a cardboard box and on the bottom of the box you can see the eclipse as the moon moves across the sun. Trees actually do the same exact thing, since the gaps between the leaves act as millions of tiny little pinhole cameras. So if you have a leafy tree nearby you can actually see this phenomenon played out a thousand fold in the shadows.

I went and took pictures of the eclipse every 10 minutes to try and get a full progression of shots. What ended up happening was then I was able to line them all up and show a really good time-lapse of the event. Since I live down in Utah, I was slightly off the "full eclipse" line but we still ended up getting about 80-90% coverage.

 Here is the eclipse towards the beginning.

Here is the eclipse about mid-way.

And here is the eclipse on the back half.

 And here is my complete time-lapse of the event. 

So, all in all, not a bad outcome.

Random Geology Photos - Flight over the Great Salt Lake

Going through some old photos, I came across these that I took as we were flying over the Great Salt Lake on my flight from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. 

 A view of the salt marshes to the east of the Great Salt Lake.

 Antelope Island, which was formerly an island in the lake, however dropping water levels have exposed the land to the east of the island, no longer making this an island. 

 Another former island, Stansbury Island, which is further to the west. 

 Not exactly of the Great Salt Lake, but in the middle of this photograph is what is called the "Stockton Bar". You can partially see it at the foot of the smaller mountain in the center of the picture. The Stockton Bar is a sandbar located in the Tooele Valley (the valley one over from the Salt Lake Valley) from the old Lake Bonneville. 

A view looking back at the Great Salt Lake from the south, where you can see some of the rock formations in the Oquirrh (pronounced o-ker) Mountains. This is the mountain range on the western edge of the Salt Lake Valley.

Random Geology Photo - "Easy" Paleontology?

This picture was given to me from the son of a friend who had visited the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in NY. His comment to me was jokingly:

 "is this what paleontology is? Well I can do that!". 

Even though this was a joke, I think it brings up a good point. Does this make paleontology look "easy"? Or should the rest of the animal be included, even if it isn't well known?

The above animal is the Indricotherium from the Primitive Mammals Hall at the AMNH (also known as Paraceratherium transouralicum).

Original skull of the above animal with the preparator Otto Falkenback, May 1st, 1923.

 He is part of an exhibit on the diversity of early mammal teeth. Indricotherium is the largest land mammal that ever lived, weighing as much as 3-4 adult African elephants. So, it would make sense if what you were focusing on was the skull and the teeth, to just display the skull and teeth. The rest of the animal could get distracting from your point. But was it a good idea?

The animal itself, is also only known from fragmentary fossil evidence, with a mostly complete skull. By, placing the body in this context, it makes it known to the observer, that we just don't know that much about it. Perhaps this will send a young child off in the direction of paleontology, going "I want to find THAT answer".

Also, Manias, 2014, gives a good history over the construction and modeling of the Indricotherium, including the interesting fact that the AMNH never actually received a full model of the animal, only bits and pieces from various animals that were all different sizes. And due to the extreme size differences of the available bones, it made sizing up the smaller animals rather problematic, and the incomplete nature of the skeletons made filling in the gaps problematic.

So in all, I would prefer to see something like this. A skull with a vague skeletal representation, instead of something that could, in the long run, be found out to be very very wrong with increased fossil evidence being found.

Random Geology Photo - Air Temperature Gradient on a Mountain Range

One of the things that I love most about the transition from fall to winter is the time of year when it is not cold enough for snow to fall in the valley but it will fall on the mountains as seen below. I had previously published a similar, although not quite as good (in my opinion), photo on this blog before.

The air temperature gradient as seen along the Oquirrh Mts in Utah.

As you move up in the atmosphere the temperature decreases. As described at onthesnow.com, this temperature gradient depends on the weather outside. On cloudy and snowy days the change in temperature is about 3.3°F per 1,000 ft in elevation or up to 5.4°F on sunny days. 

The best thing that I love about this picture is that it highlights the slope in the land. When you are driving out here you don't realize how much elevation gain there is driving south (the right side of the photo). As you can see the snow line meets the valley surface on the right (south) side of the image. The right (south) side is approximately 600-700 feet higher in elevation than the left (north) side of the image which runs into the Great Salt Lake (just off the picture to the left). The snow line then produces not only a topographic contour (line of equal elevation) but also a isotherm (a line of equal temperature). 

References
http://www.onthesnow.com/news/a/15157/does-elevation-affect-temperature-

Random Geology Picture - Temperature-Elevation Correlation

Here are some older pictures I had taken. They are panoramas of the Oquirrh Mountains (pronounced Oaker) looking east. I had taken the pictures to illustrate changes in the temperature gradient as you moved up in the atmosphere. While it was raining down in the valley, you can pick out the freezing point in the atmosphere by just looking at where the snow started. Also you can see by this snow line, that the mountains are sloped to the left (the north). 

Random Geology Picture - Partial Lunar Eclipse

Going through some of my old photos, here are some shots of the partial lunar eclipse that occurred last year on April 15th (Thanks Katie for the date verification). 

Random Picture - Natural History Museum of Utah at night

Going through my old photos and here is one I wanted to post.

The museum was lit up for a special event, so when I left I was able to see the mammoth from outside the main entrance. I had been wanting to capture this shot for a while (I have a horrible time trying to not move while taking pictures on my iPhone) so I brought my camera specifically for this shot.

Cloud Covered Mountains

Here is some pretty cool cloud coverage of the Wasatch Mountains (UT) on my drive in to work the other day. Click on it to get the enlarged version.

Geology on the Road - St George, UT

Here are some pictures from the St George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in southern Utah from a tour i was given after the SVP annual meeting last tear. Very nice trackways. I need to go back and get better pictures sometime.

Random Paleo Photo from the archives

And the next of my photos through the archives is this picture of the Huntington Mammoth from the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price, UT.

Random Geology Photo

There are a series of rocks lining the rim of the Grand Canyon. This picture was taken of one of those rocks from my trip back in March, 2011. The rock pictured is likely the Vishnu Schist but I'm not entirely positive.

This is my attempt to clean out the old geology photos off my iPod that I took for the blog since now Blogger has a app.

Rocks!

Turbidite Panorama - Part 2

I had posted a picture previously of one of my field areas in Zumaia, Spain. Well this is the counter point image of that shot:

http://jazinator.blogspot.com/2011/12/geology-photo-of-day-part-4.html

This image was taken from the far left of the first image mostly pointing back towards that first image. Here we are entirely in Eocene deep marine turbidites. The P-E boundary is approximately towards the center of the image. I love the folds in the close up rocks on this shot.

Geology Photo of the Day - Part 5

I try to refrain from doing two posts in a day (Geojeopardy! Fridays must go on) but since I have done this all week I will keep it up. Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here. Also @GeoEvelyn has been reposting some of the Geology Picture Memes on her Twitter account.

The last picture of the week is one a couple of blocks from my office in Salt Lake City, UT. It may seem like a grassy hill but what you are actually looking at is one of the potentially deadliest faults in the US. This is the Wasatch Fault fault scarp at Faultline Gardens and it is currently overdue for one of it's typical ~7.0 magnitude faults. What that would do to Salt Lake City is pretty much level it to the ground (being build on loose sediment for the most part). Yea liquifaction.

I love how when people moved to SLC they didn't realize this was a fault and built directly on top of it. Even digging out the fault scarp to get a better foundation for their building. That has since become illegal (to build on the fault) but I know several apartment complexes that will be ripped right in half when the earthquake comes (there was one directly behind me when I took the picture).