Vaguely Informed Commentary From the Wide World of Earth Science
Chris Rowan is a geologist specialising in the dark arts of paleomagnetism, and getting people to pay him to travel to exotic destinations for fieldwork. Having drilled up New Zealand during his PhD, he is now a post-doc at the University of Johannesburg.
What the heck does 'Highly Allochthonous' mean?
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Category: geology • geopuzzling
Posted on: October 3, 2008 12:14 PM, by Chris Rowan
Since this whole geopuzzle malarky was kicked off by a mystery Google Earth image, here's another one for you.
One (fairly) obvious feature of this image are the long linear features, which are almost certainly geological in origin. What could they be? animal, vegetable or mineral volcanic, structural or lithological?
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Comments
Hey, you got Google Earth to show UTM coordinates! How did you do that?
I vote for a combination of structural and igneous (or possibly hydrothermal) - they look like conjugate sets of either dikes or veins. (The landscape looks like either igneous or really strong metamorphic rock, too.)
Posted by: Kim | October 3, 2008 2:38 PM
Unless it's sediment lines laid down in Noah's flood, I'd say they were old tracks from when our ancestors were hunting dinosaurs.
Um...
Glaciation? It's always glaciation at least 75% of the time.
Posted by: Akheloios | October 3, 2008 3:02 PM
I have to vote for structural for the reasons Kim stated above. And the color reminds me of chlorite.
Posted by: Silver Fox | October 3, 2008 11:48 PM
Dikes!
Posted by: Ian | October 4, 2008 1:02 AM
Ha! Found it.
Yes, Google Earth can do the Coordinates- Site is located in South Africa, near Swaziland. NW trending near-vertical beds of harder rock are visible. (probably dikes.) Is this one of the ancient (Mesozoic??) landscapes that I have read about there???
Rolling topography, 4000 ft to 5000 ft elevation; No strong erosion or river cutting.... May well be an exhumed landscape. Metamorphic country rocks. That's what I think.
M. Carey; California.
Posted by: M. Carey | October 4, 2008 2:23 AM
Oops, did'nt notice before- you are from SA.
You should come and visit our N. Calif melange!
Posted by: M. Carey | October 4, 2008 2:25 AM
Another vote for strutural. Pressure ridges?
Posted by: CherryBomb | October 5, 2008 5:59 PM
dykes intruded into shock-related fractures?
Astrobleme??
Posted by: Arctic-mermaid | October 5, 2008 7:58 PM
Kim - if you go to 'Tools' and 'Options' in the Google Earth menu bar, there are several different options for co-ordinate display.
The basement is actually Archean granites associated with the Barberton Greenstone belt.
Posted by: Chris Rowan | October 6, 2008 6:08 AM