S Curves on Rock Face
September 28, 2015
Photographer: Philip Dombrowski
Summary Authors: Philip Dombrowski; Jim Foster
The photo above showing impressive S curves on a roadcut rock face was captured just off Route 9 in Connecticut. This metamorphic rock twists and turns as a result of ancient land masses plowing into one another, long before North America, Europe and Africa acquired their current shapes and positions. The tremendous pressures generated during these slow motion collisions not only hardened the bedrock but also grossly deformed it. Because a number of dikes intrude into the metamorphic rock here, the deformation is easy to detect.