#qinling

Pyritized fossil

A fossil in shale replaced by pyrite. I’m not sure what species it is, but from the shape I would suspect that it could be a Belemnoid, which was a creature similar to modern cuttlefish.

“The Golden Couple” Marsel van Oosten Photography 

The golden couple by Marsel van Oosten, The Netherlands – grand title winner, Animal portraits

A male Qinling golden snub-nosed monkey rests on a stone, joined by a female from his group. Both are watching an altercation down the valley between the lead males of two other groups in the 50-strong troop. It’s spring in the temperate forest of China’s Qinling mountains, the only place where these endangered monkeys live. To show both a male’s beautiful pelage and striking blue face, Marsel had to shoot at an angle from the back. It took many days observing the group to achieve his goal.

Recumbent fold

The recumbent fold which in geological jargon means an overturned fold is a structural feature. When rocks are squeezed by the tectonic forces variety of deformational features form within compressed rocks. Type of features formed depends of many factors, but the major ones are a degree of compression, depth at which it occurs (which dictates the temperature) and too lesser degree rock type (depending on temperature, the higher the temperature the more ductile/softer the rock will be; see here for extra information on this).

This recumbent fold formed when compression was really high, to the point when the rocks were folded so tightly that the arms of the fold (either side of the folded rocks) were placed parallel to each other (imagine that unfolded rocks are like an open book and pages on either side of the book are continuos layers of rocks, but when you close the book, the same layers will be bent on themselves, changing direction by 180°) this structure is called an isoclinal fold. But the recumbent fold goes beyond that. It occurs when these tightly bent rocks are forced to one side (on this example to the left), bending once more on themselves. This is an example of high degree of deformation.