Trilobite to Staurolite

A “Geo-delicious” Slice through Northwest Georgia

Roadside Geology of Georgia co-author Dr. Bill Witherspoon takes you on a journey through time and space, from Georgia’s northwest corner to Greater Atlanta. Why do the rocks in the first location preserve delicate impressions that extinct critters left in mud, while at the second location, rocks are “well-cooked” enough to have erased fossils and grown crystals such as staurolite “fairy crosses”? Why are layers of mud at the first place as smooth as the day they settled out of water, and at the second contorted beyond recognition, even melted? And how did the discovery 60 years ago that continents are in motion cast the answers to these questions in a whole new light? 

See nature at scales from microscopic to continental, expand your understanding of the contrasts between the Valley and Ridge and the Piedmont regions of Georgia, and glimpse the breadth of knowledge that scientists have gained about our planet. 

Event image credit: Horia Ionescu's Images via Canva.com

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