KPT's Earth thread

Looks more rock shaped than spherical.

 

A rock thrown with appropriate precision will wake you up pretty well. Throw it too hard though and it will have the opposite effect.

Maybe you could train a pet rock to do your homework?

 

Beautiful picture and interesting attachment, at least the stuff I could understand.

Keith likes to flex like that...but his threats are pretty hollow...unless he really does have the mods in his pocket as some suspect.

 

If I'm not mistaken the Morrison formation is visible around Moab. Lots of bentonite in the Morrison. I have a love-hate thing with the Morrison. It's kinda cool, has a rainbow of colors. It's Jurassic age, so has occasional dinosaur bones. Has layers of sandstone, limestone, and red and green shale. On the other hand, I had a project in college where I had to measure and describe every subunit of the Morrison that was present in a particular area, then draft a structural profile, stratigraphic column, and geological map of the area by hand. No GPS and no computers allowed. And there was no guidance, I got to choose how many subunits there were and justify my divisions. I spent 10 hours covering 80 feet of ground, hunched over with my rock hammer and hand lens just in the Morrison.

But it was kinda fun. LOL

 

Good morning my Earth Smart Friend.

 

Hers one for y'all to try and figure out. What is it?????

Hint: It is in Tanzania

 

its ejected lava from Mt Ngorogoro......and yes it is also from the lion king

 

Actually, I recommend the Estwing 45A campers axe with long handle and nylon vinyl non-slip grip, which really helps once the blood starts spilling, let me tell you. Plus, "It's for camping, Mr. Ranger...."

 

The greenish-gray in the Morrison is glauconite. It's an iron and potassium-based type of mica. It forms in shallow marine environments exclusively. So that means we know the Morrison was formed on the continental shelf- that's basically part of the continent that is drowned due to high sea level. We know that when dinosaurs were alive the Earth was unusually warm. In the Cretaceous especially but also in the Jurassic there was a lot less glaciation, so there was a lot more ocean than there is now. Also the Earth looked a lot different. The last supercontinent, Gondwana, was just beginning to break apart. The Rocky Mountains had not yet been formed. Here's what it looked like in the middle of the Jurassic:


(There's an app for that?)

Arches National Park is mostly the Entrada Sandstone, which is middle to late Jurassic. Also there's some Navajo Sandstone, which is late Triassic to early Jurassic, so just a little older than then Entrada. The Morrison is late Jurassic.

The Navajo- the oldest formation I mentioned- was a dune field. The area was a desert. By the time the Entrada was deposited ocean level has started to rise. The Entrada is composed of beach dunes and tidal flats. This probably accounts for the variation in thickness. Nearshore/shoreline areas like deltas and tidal flats are often jumbled up, messy geology because they have rapid deposition alternating with rapid erosion. Water is constantly moving the sand around and washing away parts of beaches and tidal flats. As the water gets deeper toward the end of the Jurassic, those beaches and tidal flats are submerged and you see the shales of the Morrison.