#geology

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US Elevation.

by@cstats1

man the Appalachian mountains really aren’t shit huh

The Rockies are new, young and virile and fresh from the Laramide orogeny, tall and lanky teenagers on the geological scale.

the Appalachian mountains are old, formed hundreds of millions of years ago before dinosaurs walked the Earth. They are ancients, elders, witnesses to half a billion years of life coming and going.

To be tall is not a virtue. To be small is not a sin. The Appalachians are eroding under the weight of time, slowly shrinking and returning to the Earth from which they sprang.

Appreciate them while they are still here.

I do want to say real quick again about the age of the Appalachians…

They said “before dinosaurs,” but we have a cave here that began forming between 450 million to 550 million years ago.

There are no bones in that cave. No fossils. No nothing.

That’s because this cave began forming before bones existed on land, and had only just started to exist in the ocean. Shellfish hadn’t evolved yet. Limestone, which forms many caves, was just starting to become a more prevalent rock.

The mountains aren’t older than dinosaurs. They are older thanbones.

see that little lump up at the top of minnesota? the sawtooth mountains? so small most places would just call them hills?

image

those are over a billion years old.

that’s why they’re so small. they’re the last ancient remnants of a lava flow 5 miles thick. the lava didn’t kill any dinosaurs. or any fish. or any animals at all. because there were no animals. you know what there was?

algae.

those mountains were 5 miles tall when the most advanced life on earth was algae.

so i’m just gonna go ahead and keep calling them mountains, even though all you need to climb them is hiking shoes and a nice afternoon. because a place where you can crouch down and touch basalt that was lava before leaves were invented deserves some respect.

The earth is unfathomably ancient, and you garner no love from her when you insult her eldest children.

not only that, the Appalachians predate the Atlantic Ocean and were fragmented. they stretch across three continents, as Atlas in Africa and Caledonians in Europe as you can see here:

the Appalachians are way way old. the fossils that ARE found in these ranges are ancient marine beings, whose fossil remains predate the anatomical structures of beings migrating to land for the first time. THAT’S how old the Appalachians are.

show the elders some respect, they have witnessed eons and are returning to the land from which they grew, it’s the kind of the passage of time on a scale that our human lives could not even begin to comprehend.

Give me ALL the geology discourse

Okay but something a lot of people don’t know is that New York City was supposed to have mountains as tall as the Alps in its backyard, ten times higher than any skyscraper in the city.

These mountains were called the Taconic Mountains.

You can watch a video on pbs.org for free here to learn more about it.

Watch the whole video to learn more about the geology of North America, the geological history of North America, and how it impacts North Americans today.

Start at 25:21 to learn more about the geology of New York City and how this shapes how the city was built and why construction can take so long sometimes.

Start at 30:05 to learn more about the Taconic Mountains specifically.


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Mineral Monday

Linarite, PbCu(SO4)(OH)2

Classification: Sulfate

Name Derivation: Linares, Spain.

Physical Properties: Monoclinic, 2.5 hardness, light blue streak

Dinosunday

Irritator

Temporal Range: Early Cretaceous, 110 Ma

Location: South America

Diet: Omnivore

Family: Spinosauridae

Strataday

Conrad, A. “Source Rock for the World’s Largest Oil Field,” silurian shale. Quassim Province, Saudi Arabia.

Dinosunday

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! Here is the official dinosaur of America’s capital to celebrate. To avoid confusion, this dinosaur has not been officially classified because the only fossil found was one vertabrae from one dinosaur. The classification is still under debate, and current information is subject to change if more fossils are found.

Capitalsaurus

Temporal Range: Early Cretaceous

Location: Eastern United States

Diet: Carnivore

Family: Undetermined

Strataday

Saltatelli F. “Triassic Layering in Ischigualasto Provincial Park,” Valley of the Moon. San Juan, Argentina.

Mineral Monday

Pyrite FeS2

Classification: Sulfide

Name Derivation: Greek word ‘pyritēs’ meaning “of fire.”

Properties: Cubic, 6-6.5 hardness, greenish-black streak

Dinosunday

Achillobator

Temporal Range: Late Cretaceous, 93-80 Ma

Location: Mongolia

Diet: Carnivore

Family: Dromaeosauridae

Walk past this every time I go to the lake, and just noticed it’s abundance of fossils.

Strataday

Lynch, D. “Encore,” Folding and Faulting. Calico Mountains, California.

Mineral Monday

Corundum Al2O3

Classification:Oxide

Name Derivation: Tamil word, Kurundam

Properties:Hexagonal, 9 hardness

Dinosunday

Kosmoceratops

Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 76.4-75.9 Ma

Location: North America

Diet: Herbivore

Family: Ceratops

Patagonia

A beautiful region shared by Argentina and Chile in the Southern Andes. Glaciers are a prominent feature which have carve mountains, and created lakes.

Research highlights ethical sourcing of materials for modern technology

Researchers from the Camborne School of Mines have identified methods to predict the environmental and social cost of resourcing new deposits of rare earth minerals used in the production of mobile phones, wind turbines and electric vehicles.

The team are pioneering techniques to develop the equivalent of a ‘Fairtrade’ model for ethically and sustainably resourcing raw materials that are crucial in the manufacturing of next generation technologies.

In the research the team highlight the pivotal role that geoscientists can play in developing 'life cycle assessment techniques" for potential new deposits of rare earth elements, to meet the growing worldwide demand.

The research is published in the journal, Elements.

Robert Pell, PhD student at the Camborne School of Mines, based at the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall, and co-author on the paper said, 'It is important that we understand the environmental costs of generating these rare earths so that we can select the right projects to support, but also research and improve the areas of production with a greater environmental cost. This is especially important when you consider the demand growth of rare earths, and their importance in the proliferation of green technology.“

Read more.

All of these samples were collected at Hogen Camp Mine, Harriman State Park, NY. The first image is a reflected light image of the ore vein. The ore vein formed as a result of dextral shear which ultimately created large fractures. Shortly after this, hydrothemal alteraltion occured of the metavolcanic gneiss in the region (image 2 and 3). The metavolcanic gneiss is rich in iron. Due to this, the highly acidic metamorphic fluids began to precipitate in the fractures. The process yeilded magnetite, clinopyroxene, and less common biotite within the fractures occuring at Hogen Camp Mine. The clinopyroxene and biotite are highly rich in iron.

Image 3 and 4 is the local pink pegmatites that occured in the region around 923 Ma. The pegmatitic dikes formed post-Ottawan orogeny. Composition includes: alkali feldspar with minor constituents of clinopyroxene and quartz.

This rock is a quartzofeldspathic gneiss from Surebridge Mine in Harriman State Park, NY. What’s so cool about this is you can see the hydrothermal process which alters biotite to chlorite. The large brown grain being biotite, and the purple/blue/green in the center being chlorite. (10x XPL)

Working on polishing my samples for reflective light microscopy. This sample is a pyroxenite from Ho

Working on polishing my samples for reflective light microscopy. This sample is a pyroxenite from Hogen Camp Mine in the Hudson Highlands region of New York. The area was once a lead producer of iron ore and magnetite for the east coast.


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Alkali Feldspar crystals are large in this thin section. The alkali feldspar have subhedral crystals

Alkali Feldspar crystals are large in this thin section. The alkali feldspar have subhedral crystals. The quartzy matrix in some areas is intergrown at the edge of the alkali feldspar crystal faces. The muscovite crystallized in the interstitial space and have anhedral crystal faces. To differentiate between the muscovite and the biotite pleochroism comes into effect. The biotite is darker amber under PPL and muscovite is tan/light brown. Both are pleochroic under PPL.


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This rock is composed predominantly of plagioclase feldspar that are large euhedral crystals suggest

This rock is composed predominantly of plagioclase feldspar that are large euhedral crystals suggesting that they formed first in the melt. In the interstitial space there is clinopyroxene which suggests that the clinopyroxene formed after the plagioclase. The larger crystals do not have any form of twinning, so at first glance they look like quartz. After using the bertrand lens, the big crystals have an optic sign of biaxial which help conclude that the crystals are plagioclase and not quartz. The fractures in the big crystals have clinopyroxene crystals present. The rock is most likely an anorthosite/tonalite.

(For future posts #optmin is the tag to see all my original content!)


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The plagioclase in this thin section has polysynthetic twinning. The orthopyroxene also has twinning

The plagioclase in this thin section has polysynthetic twinning. The orthopyroxene also has twinning present in most grains. The clinopyroxene is filling voids in the rock and have an anhedral structure, filling interstitial space, compared to to the plagioclase and orthopyroxene which range from subhedral to euhedral. The rock is a gabbronorite due to the presence of both orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene.


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