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San Andres Formation, United States
The San Andres Formation is a geologic formation found in New Mexico and Texas. It contains fossils characteristic of the late Leonardian (Kungurian) Age) of the Permian Period. The formation is the most widely exposed Paleozoic formation in the state of New Mexico, cropping out in a zone wide that extends from west Texas to central New Mexico and with additional exposures in the Zuni Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It is also prominent in the subsurface in the San Juan Basin and in eastern New Mexico. Description The formation consists mostly of massive marine limestone. The limestone is typically cherty and poorly fossiliferous, but fossils are locally abundant. The total thickness is up to . The formation is transitional with the underlying Glorieta Sandstone or Yeso Group. Where the basal sandstone beds are a minor component compared with marine limestone, these beds are assigned to the Rio Bonito Member of the San Andres Formation and no Glorieta Sandstone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Malpais National Monument
El Malpais National Monument is a National Monument located in western New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States. The name El Malpais is from the Spanish term '' Malpaís'', meaning ''badlands'', due to the extremely barren and dramatic volcanic field that covers much of the park's area. It is on the Trails of the Ancients Byway, one of the designated New Mexico Scenic Byways.Trail of the Ancients. New Mexico Tourism Department. Retrieved August 14, 2014. Geography and geology 
The lava flows, cinder cones, and other volcanic features of El Malpais are part of the
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Kungurian
In the geologic timescale, the Kungurian is an age or stage of the Permian. It is the latest or upper of four subdivisions of the Cisuralian Epoch or Series. The Kungurian lasted between and million years ago (Ma). It was preceded by the Artinskian and followed by the Roadian. It corresponds roughly to the Leonardian Stage, covering the span from 280 to 270.6 ± 0.7 Ma in the North American system. Stratigraphy The Kungurian is named after the Russian city of Kungur in Perm Krai. The stage was introduced into scientific literature by Russian geologist Alexandr Antonovich Stukenberg (Alexander Stuckenberg) in 1890.; 2002: ''Progress report on the base of the Artinskian and base of the Kungurian by the Cisuralian Working Group'', Permophiles 41: pp 13–16. The base of the Kungurian Stage is defined as the place in the stratigraphic record where fossils of conodont species ''Neostreptognathodus pnevi'' and ''Neostreptognathodus exculptus'' first appear. As of 2009, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delaware Basin
The Delaware Basin is a geologic depositional and structural basin in West Texas and southern New Mexico, famous for holding large oil fields and for a fossilized reef exposed at the surface. Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns National Park protect part of the basin. It is part of the larger Permian Basin, itself contained within the Mid-Continent oil province. Geology By earliest Permian time, during the Wolfcampian Epoch, the ovoid shaped subsiding Delaware Basin extended over 10,000 square miles (26,000 km²) in what is now western Texas and southeast New Mexico.. This period of deposition left a thickness of 1600 to 2200 feet (490 to 670 m) of limestone interbedded with dark-colored shale. A narrow outlet that geologists call the ''Hovey Channel'' periodically supplied new seawater from the Panthalassa Ocean to the west. The somewhat smaller and shallower Midland Basin was just east and the much smaller Marfa Basin was to the southwe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cherry Canyon Formation
The Cherry Canyon Formation is a geologic formation found in the Delaware Basin of southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. It contains fossils characteristic of the Guadalupian Age of the Permian Period.Kues and Giles 2004, p.100 Description The formation consists mostly of cyclic marine sandstone and siltstone, but with interfingering tongues of gray limestone (the Getaway, South Wells, and Manzanita Members). These extend from the Goat Seep reef, an earlier and much smaller precursor to the Capitan reef, into what was then deep, anoxic water of the Permian Basin. A lower tongue of the formation extends across the basin margin to grade into the nearby San Andres Formation. Maximum thickness of the Cherry Canyon Formation is . The formation rests on the Brushy Canyon Formation, but the lower tongue fills a few deep paleochannels that cut down through the Brushy Canyon and the underlying Cutoff Formation into the Victorio Peak Formation.Kues and Giles 2004, p.124 A hiatus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brushy Canyon Formation
The Brushy Canyon Formation is a Permian geologic unit in Guadalupe Mountains National Park. The formation contains fan sandstones that were deposited under ancient seawater during the Middle Permian The Guadalupian is the second and middle series/epoch of the Permian. The Guadalupian was preceded by the Cisuralian and followed by the Lopingian. It is named after the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico and Texas, and dates between 272.95 ± 0. .... These rocks contain abundant fish fossils like sharks' teeth preserved within small phosphatic nodules. Footnotes {{Reflist, 3, refs= "Guadalupe Mountains National Park," Hunt, Santucci, and Kenworthy (2006); page 64. References * Hunt, ReBecca K., Vincent L. Santucci and Jason Kenworthy. 2006. "A preliminary inventory of fossil fish from National Park Service units." in S.G. Lucas, J.A. Spielmann, P.M. Hester, J.P. Kenworthy, and V.L. Santucci (ed.s), Fossils from Federal Lands. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gypsum
Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. Alabaster, a fine-grained white or lightly tinted variety of gypsum, has been used for sculpture by many cultures including Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient Rome, the Byzantine Empire, and the Nottingham alabasters of Medieval England. Gypsum also crystallizes as translucent crystals of selenite. It forms as an evaporite mineral and as a hydration product of anhydrite. The Mohs scale of mineral hardness defines gypsum as hardness value 2 based on scratch hardness comparison. Etymology and history The word ''gypsum'' is derived from the Greek word (), "plaster". Because the quarries of the Montmartre district of Paris have long furnished burnt gypsum (calcined gypsum) used for various purposes, this dehydrated gypsum became known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transgression (geology)
A marine transgression is a geologic event during which sea level rises relative to the land and the shoreline moves toward higher ground, which results in flooding. Transgressions can be caused by the land sinking or by the ocean basins filling with water or decreasing in capacity. Transgressions and regressions may be caused by tectonic events such as orogenies, severe climate change such as ice ages or isostatic adjustments following removal of ice or sediment load. During the Cretaceous, seafloor spreading created a relatively shallow Atlantic basin at the expense of deeper Pacific basin. That reduced the world's ocean basin capacity and caused a rise in sea level worldwide. As a result of the sea level rise, the oceans transgressed completely across the central portion of North America and created the Western Interior Seaway from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. The opposite of transgression is regression in which the sea level falls relative to the land and expo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yeso Group
The Yeso Group is a group of geologic formations in New Mexico. It contains fossils characteristic of the Kungurian Age of the early Permian Period. Description The Yeso Group is lithologically complex, ranging from marine shelf carbonate rock to the south through shoreline and sabkha beds to eolian dune and sheet sand deposits to the north. It is exposed in the mountains and other uplifts bordering the Rio Grande Rift and in the Pecos River valley. It is present in the subsurface in the Raton Basin. The group records a major marine transgression from the south during the early Leonardian (Kungurian). In the Jemez Mountains, the group consists of massive cross-bedded lower beds (De Chelly Sandstone) and thinner upper beds (San Ysidro Formation) suggesting a more fluvial depositional environment. The Yeso Group is exposed extensively in the Jemez Mountains, but pinches out in the northern Jemez, delineating the northern limit of the dune field from which it arose. Fart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glorieta Sandstone
The Glorieta Sandstone is a geologic formation in New Mexico. It preserves fossils characteristic of the Kungurian age of the Permian geology. Description The Glorietta Sandstone is a massive yellowish brown to light gray, cliff-forming, fine to medium grained, very mature quartzarenite sandstone that weathers to reddish brown. At the type section, about 33% of the formation is trough-crossbedded sandstone with beds up to thick and with large foresets. Another 27% of the formation is wind-ripple laminated sandstone. Many beds are extremely well cemented. The formation is exposed in most of the flanking uplifts of the Rio Grande Rift and extends in the subsurface to west Texas. It is particularly prominent in Glorieta Pass but extends west to the Jemez Mountains (where it pinches out in the central Nacimiento Mountains) and south to the Socorro area. The Glorieta Sandstone is of Kungurian (upper Leonardian) age and forms a ledge at or near the top of the Permian section through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chert
Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a precipitation (chemistry), chemical precipitate or a diagenesis, diagenetic replacement, as in petrified wood. Chert is typically composed of the petrified remains of siliceous ooze, the biogenic sediment that covers large areas of the deep ocean floor, and which contains the silicon skeletal remains of diatoms, Dictyochales, silicoflagellates, and radiolarians. Precambrian cherts are notable for the presence of fossil cyanobacteria. In addition to Micropaleontology, microfossils, chert occasionally contains macrofossils. However, some chert is devoid of any fossils. Chert varies greatly in color (from white to black), but most often manifests as gray, brown, grayish brown and light green to rusty redW.L. Roberts, T.J. Campbell, G.R. Rapp Jr. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms when these minerals precipitate out of water containing dissolved calcium. This can take place through both biological and nonbiological processes, though biological processes, such as the accumulation of corals and shells in the sea, have likely been more important for the last 540 million years. Limestone often contains fossils which provide scientists with information on ancient environments and on the evolution of life. About 20% to 25% of sedimentary rock is carbonate rock, and most of this is limestone. The remaining carbonate rock is mostly dolomite, a closely related rock, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, . ''Magnesian limestone'' is an obsolete and poorly-defined term used variously for dolomite, for limes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ''zōḗ'' (), "life", meaning "ancient life" ). It is the longest of the Phanerozoic eras, lasting from , and is subdivided into six geologic periods (from oldest to youngest): # Cambrian # Ordovician # Silurian # Devonian # Carboniferous # Permian The Paleozoic comes after the Neoproterozoic Era of the Proterozoic Eon and is followed by the Mesozoic Era. The Paleozoic was a time of dramatic geological, climatic, and evolutionary change. The Cambrian witnessed the most rapid and widespread diversification of life in Earth's history, known as the Cambrian explosion, in which most modern phyla first appeared. Arthropods, molluscs, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and synapsids all evolved during the Paleozoic. Life began in the ocean ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
