Sometimes geologic important sites don’t look like much. This nondescript roadcut on the outskirts of Danville includes the normal fault that marks the edge of the Danville basin. During the Triassic, this part of Virginia was the site of a series of rift valleys, some of which would eventually widen to form the Atlantic Ocean. The edges of these valleys had steep sides, with conglomerates deposited at the basin margins. We find these rift conglomerates on this roadcut, just to the west of the fault:

A little further into the basin you get marshes and lakes, which result in coal deposits. We can see these a few hundred yards further west along the same exposure:

The Triassic deposits we collected last Wednesday are further west in the same basin, as is the Solite Quarry, which has produced thousands of fossils, including Mecistotrachelos.

During the Triassic, the Danville basin may have looked much like today’s Lake Bogoria in Kenya (seen in this Google Earth image):

The long dark lines are the normal faults that formed the basin, which is now partially filled by Lake Bogoria.

On a separate note, the museum has entered into a new fundraising arrangement, in which I encourage you to participate. The program is called “Shop for Museums”. To participate, register at their website, and select “Virginia Museum of Natural History” as the museum you want to support. Then simply do your online shopping through their vendor links (there are several hundred participating stores, including The Apple Store, Best Buy, Target, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iTunes.) The vendors make a donation to the museum for each purchase. I made my first last night–I bought a song at the iTunes store, which resulted in a 2.5-cent donation to VMNH. I’ve added a permanent link to the Shop for Museums site on the blog main page.

On Thursday night and Friday morning you may have noticed some disruptions in the blog, as I was upgrading my html editor. I think all the kinks are worked out now, and apologize for the disruption.