5Rocks racing across a lakebed in Death Valley. Perfectly preserved 36-million-year-old tsetse flies in Colorado. Dinosaur trackways cemented into ancient floodplains in Connecticut. A gaping rift in the Idaho desert. What do these enigmatic geologic phenomena have in common? Besides initiating a profusion of head-scratching over the years, these sites of geologic wonder appear side by side, for the first time, in a single publication.
Examining in detail at least one amazing site for all fifty states, Albert Dickas clearly explains the geologic forces behind each one�s origin in 101 Geologic Sites You�ve Gotta See. Dickas discusses not only iconic landforms such as Devil�s Tower in Wyoming but also locales that are often overlooked yet have fascinating stories. Consider the Reelfoot scarp in Tennessee: to the casual observer it is nothing more than a slight rise in a farm field. Yet this subtle slope represents a rift formed during an 1812 earthquake that forced the mighty Mississippi to flow upstream. Or Lousiana�s unassuming, low-lying Avery Island, which actually caps an 8.5-mile-high column of salt. Amply illustrated with full-color photographs and illustrations and written in clear yet playful prose, 101 Geologic Sites You�ve Gotta See will entertain and inform amateur and seasoned geology buffs whether from an armchair or in the field.