geography

SedimentaryRoadcutCheck List

Format

Title – real specific rock type terms that reflect what is in the cross section.

Outcrop shape – the standard tapered end roadside rockface.

Scale Bar – rulered in feet or meters to reflect the size of your outcrop.

Geology

All areas represent rock types with …

-distinct contact lines and,

-filled with rock type appropriate patterning and

-a color shading. (Not colored patterning).

All elongate pattern elements like dashed lines and layers of bricks

-run parallel to the layers that they are in

(if the layer is folded the bricks or dashes need to follow and show the same folds)

Legend

-single stack of ruler drawn square boxes

-in stratigraphic age order with youngest at the top and oldest at the bottom.

Each box

-filled with same pattern and color shading as unit in the cross section

-has text entry to include

-the specific rock type

-geologic time period age and

-an inventive description

(be sure description doesn’t just repeat the standard definition for that rock type)

Details

Does your cross section clearly show…

-the horizontal erosion surface through the middle of the outcrop as a

central prominent feature.

-beds below as steeply tilted consistently across the outcrop

(don’t be tempted to make these beds folded as that is a later topic)

-lower bed contact lines that are truncated at the erosion surface?

-upper beds that are horizontal parallel to the erosion surface.

-the unconformity as a horizontal wavy line (the erosion surface in cross section) within

the legend separating the appropriate units into upper and lower sets of beds??

Do your …..

-dashed lines (shale) and bricks layers (limestone) run parallel to the beds they are in??

-limestone patterning brick layers shown as a brick wall and

not as isolated floating bricks?

-geologic time period age assignments reflect the necessary gap in geologic time

represented by the unconformity?