Posts treating: "Yoho National Park"
Monday, 17 November 2014
The name Bundenbach is one which excites me because it is the name of a town that is near a layer of rock, called the Hunsruck Slate, that preserves some extraordinary fossils. It's what is called a Lagerstätte which are sedimentary rocks that have exceptional preservation of fossils, sometimes including soft parts which usually rot away before being fossilized. The Burgess Shale outcrop in Yoho National Park, BC, Canada is the perhaps the ultimate example of this type of fossil treasure trove [...]
Esteemed readership, I’ve got a mystery for you. What are these white lines, inclined consistently at a high angle to bedding? I picked up this sample below the “Wall of Death,” on the trail from Wapta Lake below Mount Wapta, en route to the Walcott Quarry of the Burgess Shale. The “zebra-striped” rock is of the Eldon Formation of the Cambrian section in Yoho National Park. At first, I thought
I saw this large, chunky stylolite this summer somewhere along the trail from Takkakaw Falls to the Walcott Quarry of the Burgess Shale (in Yoho National Park, British Columbia). I like the way weathering has highlighted its
Good afternoon! Here are a few photos, both plain and annotated, showing the relationship between primary sedimentary bedding and tectonic cleavage in the “tectonised Stephen” Formation atop the Cathedral Escarpment (in Yoho National Park), just northeast of the Walcott Quarry where the (thicker, basinward) Stephen Formation hosts the Burgess Shale. Weathering exploits both these planes of weakness… Here, the cleavage is more planar at the bottom of the sample, and
Looking upstream on the Kicking Horse River at Field, B.C.
How strange geology is, and what wonderful journeys it provides for our imagination! So many geological processes are exceedingly slow, and yet over time incredible changes occur. How can I be talking about the edge of the continent when we are 1,000 kilometers (~600 miles) from the nearest shoreline?
I've called this narrative
The Friday fold is an outcrop in Yoho National Park that showcases differences between buckle folding and passive
Howard Allen is the documentarian of this week’s fold: Howard writes that this is: Middle Cambrian Chancellor Formation rock with recessive weathering intraclasts(?). Hamilton Lake trail, Yoho National Park, British Columbia. My interpretation of this one is a little shaky–it was raining when I took the photo (in 1982) and I was hiking with a non-geologist friend, so I didn’t linger at the outcrop or record the precise location. I
Check out the scene at Natural Bridge in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada: Don’t confuse this “Natural Bridge” with the one in Virginia. Here, in the western Canadian Rockies, the structural geology is much better. You may recall that I’ve previously featured outcrops from nearby this site as a Friday fold. It’s a great place for examining bedding / cleavage relationships in the rocks. Here’s the previous picture, annotated:
Canada's 505 million year-old Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park, have yielded yet another major scientific discovery – this time with the unearthing of a strange phallus-shaped creature.
A study to be published online in the journal Nature on March 13 confirms Spartobranchus tenuis is a member of the acorn worms group which are seldom-seen animals that thrive today
The Friday fold, delayed by a week from last week's contest, appears in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, near the "Natural Bridge" over the Kicking Horse
Here’s my crew from July’s Regional Field Geology of the Canadian Rockies course, checking out the Burgess Shale at the Walcott Quarry in Yoho National Park. A couple of the locals joined us for this portrait. Original photo courtesy of Stephen Smith, modified by
Callan's Canadian Rockies field course visits an outcrop of Cambrian slate in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. Folded and boudinaged carbonatite dikes are
WATCH FOR ROCKS - Travels of a Sharp-Eyed Geologist [2012-01-01 06:30:41]
recommend this post
(45 visits) Ordovician
The deed is done. Our goals are accomplished. That summer of 2005 we drive from southern Utah and hike to the Burgess Shale sites of Walcott Quarry and Mt. Stephen fossil beds, high in the Canadian Rockies of Yoho National Park. We turn for home eventually – but we are not quite ready to drive off into the sunset yet. An easy day at Emerald LakeRead more
WATCH FOR ROCKS - Travels of a Sharp-Eyed Geologist [2011-12-15 03:31:50]
recommend this post
(648 visits) Cambrian,Ordovician
It is eight o’clock on a chilly breezy August morning six and a half years ago. JC, CO, and I are stamping our feet and shivering with a vengeance in the cloud–stippled sunshine outside Yoho Brothers Trading Post near Field, British Columbia. We are bundled into vests and windbreakers and rain hats and thermal underwear, shivering and stamping, it seems, not so much from the cold but from anticipation. This is the beginning of our hike to the 515 million year old fossil beds of the Burgess [...]
WATCH FOR ROCKS - Travels of a Sharp-Eyed Geologist [2011-12-12 18:32:53]
recommend this post
(430 visits) Ordovician
The proprietor of Mt. Burgess Guest House in Yoho National Park, Canada thinks we are nuts to go hiking at Lake Louise this early August morning. The crowds! The tour buses! The white socks and sandals! We really do not care in the least, though. It makes no difference to JC, CO, or me. We have finally arrived at the Center of the Rocky Mountain Universe and know that if we get up early enough we can evade the white sock–wearing contingent. Plus, it is a well–known fact that ten minutes [...]
WATCH FOR ROCKS - Travels of a Sharp-Eyed Geologist [2011-12-03 06:07:05]
recommend this post
(701 visits) Ordovician
We’re definitely making progress. In the previous post about our four day epic drive from southern Utah to Canada’s Yoho National Park and its 515–million year old Burgess Shale fossils, our lively two–car caravan finally crosses the international border at the Roosville Port of Entry. We are still on Highway 93, only now we are in another country. And even though for the past three days we have found ourselves motoring along in some of the most spectacular scenery this side of the [...]
WATCH FOR ROCKS - Travels of a Sharp-Eyed Geologist [2011-11-10 23:52:10]
recommend this post
(59 visits) Ordovician
There’s nothing like starting a story at the end to pique people’s interest, eh? But now I am in a bit of a dilemma. Should I go back to the beginning of my two adventures in Canada, starting in August 2005, and relate events in the chronological sequence as they occurred? Or should I just plop down somewhere in the middle of the story and go off willy–nilly as the mood strikes? After a couple days of searching I have finally located the box within the box that holds the disc [...]
Callan visits the Burgess Shale in British Columbia's Yoho National Park on a guided tour. This photo-heavy post discusses the depositional setting of this world-famous Cambrian fossil deposit, the landscape along the hike, and (of course) the fossils