Older Than Dirt
“How old is the earth?” has been a recurring question for centuries, and the dates and procedures used to estimate its age have surely evolved with time. Enter “age of the earth” into your...
Category: Rocks
White Sand Beaches
I got a question from Jane who, while reading Marker Bed, became intrigued by the reference to quartz sand on page 29 of the print versions. (By the way, if you have not yet...
What is a Marker Bed?
I’ve had a couple requests to give a few more examples of what a geological marker bed (a.k.a. marker horizon) actually is, and more fully explain why I chose Marker Bed as the title...
Paleontology: How the Earth Makes a Fossil
We’ve spent a couple recent posts discussing geologic time and the two methods earth scientists use to describe and measure it. We started with a general introduction to earthtime and absolute age dating (Intro...
Intro to Relative Geologic Time
If you managed to plow through my latest post on Absolute Age Dating (Intro to Geologic Time), you probably muttered something like “This sounds too much like real science to be any fun at...
Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change for Dummies
This post may be a bit longer than usual, so get comfy. Click here for an index of earlier posts that touch on some of this. When I was at Physical Therapy a couple...
A couple good reads…
I’d like to recommend a couple books that I’ve read and highly recommend for anyone who is looking to expand their knowledge of the earth, and appreciates pictures to help them along the way...
Obsidian cutting tools
I read an interesting article in the New York Times that discussed the obsidian outcrops in Yellowstone National Park, and how they were mined for hundreds to thousands of years to supply the cutting...
Quicksand (a.k.a. Liquefaction)
I had a great question a little bit ago on the Ask GeoMan section of my GeoMania educational website from Elizabeth in Lake Oswego, Oregon. She’d been walking on Nye Beach on the central...
A Brief Introduction to Earthquakes
A Request… Please hit the Subscribe button and sign up for updates to this blog. It costs you nothing and gives me nothing, other than a bit of emotional validation for my efforts. What...
