Friday Field Foto #88: Plane- and ripple-laminated sandstones in the Canadian Rockies
Sorry that the blogging has been sparse of late … been busy with work, some travel, and summertime good times.
This week’s Friday Field Foto has essentially the same title as this one from a couple months ago. But instead of Eocene rocks (55-34 million yrs old) in the French Alps, the photo today is of Neoproterozoic strata (in this case, ~600 million yrs old) in British Columbia, Canada. Notice my finger at the bottom of the photo for scale.
Isaac Formation, Windermere Supergroup, Canadian Rockies (© 2009 clastic detritus)
Those ripples are gorgeous! So nice that the photo below zooms in a bit more.
Isaac Formation, Windermere Supergroup, Canadian Rockies (© 2009 clastic detritus)
In case you’re wondering … these rocks are dipping vertically, so with these photos you are standing on them and looking straight down at a cross section. The ’scuff marks’ cutting across the bedding are glacial striations. In fact, the very recent glaciation (the glacier is still there) is part of the reason these exposures are so beautiful — they’ve ‘cleaned off’ all the vegetation and soil. I love it when they do that.
Happy Friday!
Beautiful!
Excellent photos! I’m glad you mentioned the striations… I was wondering about those. Only geologists have learned to fully appreciate the richness of photos like this, not only for the information they convey about two times distantly separated in earth’s history, but for their beauty as well.