In early 2007 Brian Romans of Clastic Detritus inaugurated what was to become one of the Geoblogosphere’s longest running series Where on (Google) Earth. Today, to celebrate of the GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, it makes its first appearance here at Speaking of Geoscience.
The object of Where on (Google) Earth is to identify the locality of the image below (latitude and longitude will generally suffice), but also to explain the geological significance of the site. Since very early on it has been the tradition for the winner (first person to correctly identify the location and geologic significance of this WoGE) to host the next challenge on their own geoblog. If the winner has no geoblog, then they are responsible for starting a brand new geoblog of their own – it’s really not that hard, just ask if you need assistance – you may be surprised how much fun it can be to blog about a subject you love. The winner is further responsible for posting a link to the next challenge in the comments of the previous one as soon as the new challenge is posted. In this way we are able to maintain a chain of links to the most current incarnation of WoGE. (If you’re not willing to shoulder the responsibility of hosting the next challenge please refrain from posting your answer until someone who’s willing to host the next one has answered – otherwise it becomes something of a mess to keep the chain intact.)
I think WoGE #219 will be tricky enough to locate that I’m not going to invoke the Schott Rule, where previous winners need to wait an hour for each WoGE they’ve won before answering. The Schott Rule is invoked at the discretion of the geoblogger who posts the new WoGE. Easy challenges generally merit a Schott Rule invocation, whereas more challenging ones generally do not. The main purpose of the Schott Rule is to allow new competitors a fair chance to participate by keeping previous winners from dominating the game.
I’ll present two views of the current challenge, a standard overhead map view:
and an oblique view (what’s the fun of Google Earth if you don’t take advantage of its 3D capabilities):
Good luck in your search and enjoy the Annual Meeting in Denver, or the interesting geology that surrounds you wherever you may be!
If you want to see why they call it the Schott Rule, come visit my blog Ron Schott’s Geology Home Companion Blog. You can also follow me on Twitter @rschott. And with that, I’m off to GigaPan some Front Range roadcuts!
WoGE#220 is up. Enjoy!
This spot was actually quite easy to find, but seems difficult to document properly.
The view is located at 5.97°S – 81°W, on the Illescas Peninsula in the coastal area of the Huancabamba Andes, northern Peru. It is an exposed winodw of pre-Mesozoic basement / Paleozoic units of the Amotape-Tahuin coastal range (metamorphic rocks of Precambrian and early Paleozoic age, unconformably overlain by Devonian to Permian marine and continental sedimentary series, intruded by late Paleozoic – early Mesozoic granitoids). The linear features appear to be dikes intruded along extensional faults, but I couldn’t figure out what their composition and age is, whether they are or not related to the mentioned granitoids, and thus have no idea what caused the faulting (i.e. whether it is or not related in any way to the Andean subduction).
Congratulations, Peter! You’ve nailed it. And I’m very thankful for your detailed description of the geology, because I was having trouble finding much info about it myself. The dikes were what initially caught my attention, so if some other geologist knows more about them I’d certainly be interested to hear about them.
Time to fire up your Smugmug account again, Peter. WoGE #220 is all yours.
what a nice set of conjugate faults!
I have never been good at these but my guess on the geology is they are parallel dikes due to rifting, but I have no idea of the region
Given the crowd who’ll be looking at this, I suspect you’ve identified the easier part of this challenge. Of course, you’ll need to identify the location to nail down the details.
Keep searching!
Hmmm… looks like some kind of glacier scour –Montana?? — but that is a highly uneducated guess. : )
Nope. Keep looking! 🙂