Geodynamics Seminar

Image Gallery

Sault Ste Marie (pronounced sue saint marie) is located between the two largest Great Lakes: Lake Huron and Lake Superior. The city overlooks the St Marys River with rapids that used to be portaged by the early fur traders, which now has a canal with locks for the Great Lakes freighters. A participant inspects Old Woman Bay, Lake Superior National Park. An extremely well-preserved example of Precambrian pillow basalt textures -evidence of seafloor eruption of this basalt, analagous to processes observed today at Loihi (Hawaii) and at active Mid-Ocean Ridges. Potholes on the Sand River, Lake Surerior National Park. The famous Wawa Goose! Wawa is a picturesque lakefront town on the Trans-Canada Highway (17), 216 km (135 miles) north of Sault Ste. Marie. Wawa in the Ojibway language means Wild Goose. Fittingly enough the town has erected this huge Canada Goose monument, the largest of its kind in all of Canada, possibly the world… Students view this splendid example of oxide facies banded iron formation. Student admires Pillow Basalts near Red Rock Lake, Lake Supernior National Park, 2.71 Ga old. Laurent Montesi focuses on a narrow distal carbonatite iron dike in a roadcut just east of Wawa. Greywacke turbidite of the Porcupine Group is truncated against an unequivocal unconformity plane that is overlain by coarse, poorly sorted, polymict conglomerate of the Timiskaming sequence. Komatiite flows at Pykes Hill. Komatiite lava flow on Pike Hill. The core boxes are left there and labeled with the different flow units. Flow to to left. Spinifex-textured skeletal pyroxenes typical of the flow tops of komatiites, as beautifully displayed on Pykesrc=/NRs Hill. Foliated and carbonatized metabasalts that hosted gold mineralization at the Coniaurum Gold Mine. The reddish coloration is typical of ankeritic alteration in the Timmins camp. Discarded exploration drill cores with pyrite crystals at the site of the former Coniaurum Gold Mine near Timmins. A student examines a small boulder of kimberlite remaining after the Triple-B kimberlite prospect near New Liskeard was backfilled by the propety holders - presumably to thwart further examination of this occurence of kimberlite intruding Paleoproterozoic argillite. Kimberlite is a dark, heavy, often fragmented igneous rock that may contain diamonds in the rock matrix. Searching for occurences of pseudotachylitic Sudbury Breccia in the soot-blackened outcrops of Copper Cliff (Sudbury). A big mine toy at Craig Mine. Sudbury remains one of the worlds foremost nickel and copper mining camps with continuous production since 1886. Inco and Falconbridge Mining Companies have been mining nickel-copper ores in the Sudbury area of northern Ontario since 1902 and 1929, respectively. Today, Incosrc=/NRs Sudbury operations consist of six underground mines, one mill, one smelter and one refinery, employing approximately 6,400 people. Falconbridge operations consist of three underground mines, a mill and a smelter, employing approximately 1,500 people. These facilities are spread throughout the 60-kilometre-long, oval-shaped geological formation known as the Sudbury Basin. Nickel and copper are the primary metals produced, but cobalt and precious metals such as platinum and palladium are also recovered. The Geodynamics Group visited two Falconbridge mines: Craig Mine and Fraser Mine. Cross section through a shatter cone, Sudbury. The Big Nickel is Sudburys most famous landmark. At 9 metres high and 61 centimetres thick, this replica of the Canadian five cent piece is the largest coin in the world. Whitefish Falls cutting through Lorrain sandstone.