Thanks to Annique van der Boon for this great post about her trip this month to Iran. December in Iran – Perfect field conditions. Iran is a fascinating country for geologists. Most of the country has a semi-arid to desert climate, so there is quite little vegetation, which means there is a lot of outcrop. […]
Catherine Mottram is a good friend who is just completing her PhD at The Open University entitled: “An integrated metamorphic and isotopic study of crustal extrusion along the Main Central Thrust, Sikkim Himalaya”. She recently had the first of several papers on this topic come out in the Journal of the Geological Society of London […]
As a geology student, I lived for field trips. It didn’t matter whether we walked up Rock Canyon or flew over the Himalaya, being amongst the rocks was the paramount experience of every class. Although I have now ended my student phase, nothing has changed. I belong in the field. As I transition from the […]
The Namaqua Metamorphic Complex forms the western end of the Namaqua-Natal orogenic belt (see the bizarre granitoids of Natal here). These rocks were formed during the formation of the supercontinent Rodinia which was assembled roughly 1.1 to 1.0 billion years ago. This metamorphic belt reveals the guts of a collisional orogen. If we were to […]
This eclogitic blueschist was collected from Chamois, Italy in the Zermatt-Saas ophiolite. At this locality, smooshed pillow basalts are clearly seen at the top of the ophiolite section although in most areas the primary magmatic textures have been obliterated by high pressure metamorphism. This sample contains glaucophane, jadite/omphacite, lawsonite (pseudomorphs), and other secondary minerals. The […]
