Sarah Hall, 1000680872 September 23, 2014
Lab 1: Don Valley Brickyard Short Pre-Lab Report
1. The geology of Ontario is divided into three layers of rock. The first layer, Precambrian Canadian Shield rocks, is composed of mainly igneous and metamorphic rocks from the Precambrian Eon. This layer is the eldest at approximately 3-0.8x109 years old and is therefore the bottom-most layer (L). Although this layer is largely found in the Canadian Shield region of Ontario, glacial erratics from the Precambrian layer can be found at the Don Valley Brickyard (L). In the GTA, younger sediments and rocks cover the Precambrian rock layer (L). The second layer is Paleozoic rock, composed of sedimentary rocks
. It was deposited 600-400 million years
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The third and topmost layer of geological deposits is the Pleistocene sediment, from the Quaternary Period, which can date up to 1.7 million years old (L). This layer contains sediments of Holocene from ten thousand years ago as well as Pleistocene from 1.7MY to 10KY(L). Continent wide ice sheets deposited the glacial sediments during numerous ice ages (DVLR) and can be seen at Don Valley Brickyard. The York Till is above the bedrock, and was left 135,00 years ago by an Illinoian ice sheet. Above the till is the 80,000-year-old Don Formation that was caused by the Sangamon Interglacial, and indicates climate change by the alternation of sand and mud. Above the Don Formation, all other deposits are from the Wisconsin Glaciation. The Scarborough Formation consists of clay and then sands, and was formed 60,000 years ago. Above this is the Sunnybrook Drift and the Thorncliffe Formation from 45,000 years ago consisting of seminary …show more content…
The 440 million year old Georgian Bay Formation is largely composed of fossiliferous grey-black shale (L1R). It also consists grey fine-grained limestone, sandstone and green/grey siltstone interbedded with green/grey and blue/grey shales (Bond et. al. 1976). The frequency of hard rock units increases toward the top of the formation. Recurrent tropical storms across the Ordovician seas caused the formation of shady, thin limestone with wave ripples on top. Numerous fossils can be found in the siltstones and limestone including molluscs, crinoids and gastropods
The black Pierre Shale is the bottom layer of the Badlands and was deposited between 69 and 75 million years ago when a shallow sea stretched across what is now the Great Plains. Sediment filtered through the seawater, forming a black mud on the sea floor that has since hardened into shale. Fossil clams, ammonites, and sea reptiles are
Canada and especially Ontario have very interesting and much filled geologic pasts. Ontario has many types of rocks and minerals that have formed and are still forming due to the geology. Ontario has sedimentary rocks; igneous rock, and metamorphic rock as well as minerals such as gold, silver, quartz, and many more. In this paper, we will begin by talking about ten rocks that were collected right here in Windsor Ontario. The rocks were examined from the outside which tended to be weathered and the inside which were fresh.
Approximately 17 meters thick, Unit A defines the lowest third of the Juniata Formation. Fragments of marine fossils, including bryozoans, brachiopods, and gastropods, are commonly found in the bottom-most portion of this unit of structureless mudstone and quartz arenite. Quartz grains in the sandstone beds of Unit A are typically immature and fine-grained, though the sandstone packages tend to coarsen upwards. Though typically structureless, intermittent bedding of the sandstone and shale packages is observed in this unit, and some areas display
During the Silurian period, approximately 420 million years ago the rock bed central New York sits on was formed. In comparison the soils in the area only date 12 to 14 thousand years back in comparison. This resulted because archeological evidence shows that the Tully Valley as we know it today used to be underwater 500-300million years ago (Baldauf, 2003). One effect of this is there are a lot of trapped salt minerals that built up over the years and lithified to become rock. During the last glacial event about 8,000 years ago Tully was cut into the “U” shaped valley we recognize today. After the warming event and the ice receded moraines and kames, glacial land forms became visible in the till left in the valley. The Tully was a lake for a while similar to the Finger Lakes running north to south (Baldauf, 2003). Contrarily to the Finger Lakes the Tully Valley sits higher above sea level and it eventually drained. Today only two main creeks are the only remaining water in the valley, Rainbow, and Rattle Snake which flow along the 1200ft incline.
The oldest rocks found in the Death Valley region were formed in the Precambrian time period no more than 1.8 billion years ago during the latter half of the Proterozoic Eon. The rocks are seen on the steep face of the Black Mountains above the current area of Badwater and were formed via deposits of mud and sand from an ancient volcanic mountain belt. Sometime between 1.8 and 1.7 billion years ago, the volcanic and sedimentary rocks were severely altered when chemical or structural changes occurred because of intense heat or pressure from the Earth's core. Because of this process, any fossilized information about the region was lost making it impossible to truly understand the origin of the region. There is some debate on whether basalt or schist was the original and dominate rock in the region before it was transformed into contorted gneiss, but again, there is no way to prove either theory.
Starved rock and St. Peter Sandstone are an erosional remnant of Ordovician period. These remnants contain Pennsylvanian clastics that survived the washing out of the Illinois River at the end of the Ice Age. Evidence for swift, turbulent, and deep water includes gravel bars and erosional features as high as 160 feet above the current level of the river, massive cross bedded sand, and gravel deposits along the river course.
There are many ways to define Northern Ontario, however, I believe the most accurate geological definition of Northern Ontario was defined by the Ontario Census Division. Northern Ontario encompasses over a large percentage of provincial landmass, stretching from Parry Sound, north to the shores of Hudson Bay, west to the border of Manitoba and east to the border of Quebec (Map Two). Most of Northern Ontario is situated on the Canadian Shield which is characterized by a vast rocky plateau and lakes. In the video “Nine Rivers”, four men on a canoeing trip heading north to Hudson’s Bay, captured the beauty of Northern Ontario. They described the waterways that ranged from small creeks to massive bodies of moving water as an era of great
The Lynne deposit lies within the early Proterozoic Penokean fold belt of the southern province of the Precambrian Shield. The fold belt is divided into two major terranes in Wisconsin (Sims 1989). The first is the northern Penokean terrane, which contains major oxide facies iron formations and granitic intrusions (DeMatties 1989). The second major terrane, separated from the Penokean terrane by the Niagara fault zone, is the Wisconsin magmatic terrane, characterized by a volcanic island arc-basin assemblage (Sims 1989). This southern terrane lacks major oxide facies iron formations, but contains abundant tonalite-granite intrusions (DeMatties 1989). The Wisconsin magmatic terrane is further subdivided into the northern Pembine-Wausau terrane and the southern Marshfield terrane, which are separated by the Eau Pleine shear zone, a north-dipping subduction zone (Sims 1989).
The Oak Ridges Moraine is landform located in south central Ontario, Canada. It expands from Caledon and Rice lake river. Furthermore, it covers about 1,900 kilometers in Geographic area and is the most important landforms in Ontario. The Oak Ridges Moraine is made out of 4 wedge shaped structures running east to west ( Uxbridge, Pontypool, Rice Lake, and the Albion Hill wedges ). The wedges are separated from east to west and was formed by sedimentation, the Rice Lake wedge is separated from the other three moraines and is south of Rice Lake. The moraine is made out of major geophysical structures that shape the Oak Ridge Moraine. The western portion of the moraine is by the Niagara Escarpment, the escarpment channels give a way for a
During the Late Kaskaskia (Cratonic Sequence 3), what type of deposition predominated on the craton?
This formation is a very fine grain Mississippian limestone. To test to see if this was the Bangor formation we used HCL and because there was a reaction we know its limestone. This formation could also be described as gray in color as well as an average thickness of 700 feet. We see the Bangor until stop eight, where we see a very different vertical bedding. Also different at stop eight is the outcrop no longer reacts with HCL. From this we gathered that we had moved into the Hartselle formation. In the Hartselle Formation, Mississippian aged sandstones are dominant. This particular stop had a large amount of jointing. After the Hartselle, we figured the Pride Mountain Formation would be next, however at stop nine we see the Maury Formation present. This stop focused on the rock located inside the creek. Because we were unable to go into the creek to get the strike and dips, we once again had to do a projected orientation. Also found on this stop were natural sulfur springs, easy to notice with the smell that it gives off. The Maury formation consist of Mississippian- Silurian aged shale. At the next stop, stop 10, we encounter the Ft. Payne formation. Although this area location was thickly vegetated, we were able to conduct the acid test and saw that the HCL reacts in some places but not all. From this we concluded that this was the cherty limestone of the Ft. Payne formation. The following stop, 12, we went up section and arrived at the Maury Formation once again. At the final stop, location 13, we see Ft. Payne Formation. All of the metamorphism and deformation in the southernmost Appalachians can be related to the movement of the thrust sheets and stacks (Higgins,
Most of the river system is located within the Canadian Shield. Roughly twenty kilometers north of Mattice, Ontario is Thunder House Falls where the river cascades off the Canadian Shield and the terrain shifts into sandy lowlands. The rock underneath yourself becomes sedimentary and covered by clays dating back thousands of years (Canoeing Ontario’s Rivers). Some rocky sites, like high ground above Reva Island on Missinaibi Lake have outliers of the Great Lakes St Lawrence Forest, old stands of 350 years old Red and White Pine (Canadian Heritage Rivers Systems). Near the southern end of the river there’s a few locations where granite is joined with very ancient volcanic rocks in places such as Devil’s Shoepack Rapids and Split Rock Falls.
These Paleozoic rocks are steeply plunging sandstones and siltstones, with a little event of limestone at Lilydale - the Early Devonian Lilydale Limestone. The Silurian rocks were stored in profound water, while the Devonian rocks, which are exceptionally fossiliferous, appear to have been stored in shallower water. These Silurian and Devonian rocks were folded into a progression of anticlines
Most Cambrian rocks contain fossils of trilobite shells, cap-shaped or flattened shells, and brachiopods (Whittington, 1985). When Walcott went looking for North American Cambrian fossils in August of 1909, he ended up in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. He and his wife found a loose block in the ridge they were searching near, split it open, and found what they later classified the “lace crab” (Briggs, 1994). Walcott knew right away what they had discovered was something different – the soft parts of the crab, such as the limbs, were preserved. During the next season, Walcott and his sons came back to the Shale, searching the slopes along the trail where they had discovered the loose block to find fossil layers. Luckily for them, the Shale rock layers were almost horizontal, and for thirty days a team quarried the ridge. The next year, they spent even longer quarrying. The last year spent quarrying the rocks was in 1917, when Walcott was 67 (Briggs, 1994). The rocks were removed from the ridge using picks, chisels, long iron bars, and small explosives. All the quarrying done by Walcott and his crew resulted in over sixty five thousand fossils, now stored in the
Issue 1 facts: As a result of implementing a certain tax strategy, the Company has included a $100