Examining the Processes and Creatures of the Past that Shape our Modern World
Rocks are split into one of two categories based upon various factors. These two types of rock, which include felsic and mafic rocks, are important for distinguishing between volcano types and depositional environments. A few Helpful Terms: Viscosity: Viscosity is a measurement of how resistant a liquid is to flowing. For instance, water has a …
Continue reading Mafic vs. Felsic- How Lava Types Effect Volcanoes
Faults are an important part of geology, as they form along planes of weakness in rocks. This allows Geologists to study the stresses involved in the formation of these faults and thus infer the processes that formed the fault. Faults are fractures in a rock with movement along them due to tectonic pressures. Movement along …
The rock cycle is one of the fundamental principles of geology, and one I have neglected to explain until now. The rock cycle describes how rocks weather; that is to say breakdown, erode, and change over time. There are three end member parties in this cycle. these include igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks. …
Index Fossils are extremely important for our understanding of geologic history as it allows Geologists to quickly identify what time period a given rock is from. To understand how this works one must first understand what a fossil is. Fossils: Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals or plants. Index Fossils: Index fossils are creatures …
Continue reading Index Fossils and Trace Fossils- What are They?
In the previous blog post I had talked about the four known major orogenic events, in this post each of these events will be explained in depth. The main focus of this post will be to explain the Orogenic events themselves, not the rifting events or passive margins that occurred between each event. Grenville Orogeny: …
Tectonic processes are based upon the theory of plate tectonics. Plate Tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motion of subsurface plates within the lithosphere of the earth (see the below diagram for information about earth's layers). Plate tectonics explains why the earth's continents look the way they do today, both on …
Geologic history and how we split it up!
Geologic History and Paleontology 