As I mentioned yesterday, the Virginia Department of Geology and Mineral Resources has an excellent rock garden outside their office in Charlottesville, displaying a diverse suite of large rock samples from across the state's five physiographic provinces.

Here's Rick Diecchio (George Mason University) providing a sense of scale for the rock garden:


Here's a few of the samples that caught my eye, with my shoe providing a sense of scale (size 12, specifically) in each image...

Aquia Formation sandstone with Turitella fossils (Paleocene); King George County:


Balls Bluff Siltstone with mudcracks (Triassic); Culpeper County:


Conococheague Formation collapse breccia (Cambrian); Augusta County:


Cranberry Gneiss (?) showing well-developed lineation (Mesoproterozoic); Grayson County:


Kyanite quartzite (probably Ordovician metamorphic age); Prince Edward County:


Fossil Sigillaria tree trunk from the Wise Formation (Pennsylvanian); Wise County:


Unakite, the state rock of Virginia according to some (Mesoproterozoic); Rockbridge County:


Here's a link to the PDF (1.82 MB) with all the details about all the rocks in the garden, an impressive achievement just like the symposium.

Labels: conferences, fossils, igneous, meetings, metamorphism, primary structures, sediment, virginia