Photo Gallery of
Some of My Favorite Geological Localities in the American Southwest IV
All photos by Jim Reynolds
|Canyonlands National Park, near Moab, Utah, is
divided into three areas separated by the Colorado and Green Rivers. The
Maze lies to the west of the rivers and is undeveloped. The Island in the
Sky area is situated between the two rivers north of their confluence.
Finally, the Needles area is on the east side of the Colorado River south
of Moab. This photo of the Colorado River was taken from the Grandview
overlook in the Island in the Sky area.
||Along the road into the Needles area of Canyonlands
National Park is Newspaper Rock. It is one of many locations in the area
where numerous petroglyphs were left by indigenous peoples over the centuries.
|This valley in the Needles area of Canyonlands
National Park appeared in numerous westerns.
||One of the world's premiere dinosaur museums
is located in Blanding, Utah. This image shows an attacking Tarbosaurus
bataar, the Mongolian cousin of Tyranosaurus rex.
|The Goosenecks of the San Juan River are seen
from an overlook at Goosenecks State Park, Utah. The San Juan River is
a major tributary of the Colorado River that crosses southeastern Utah.
Like the Colorado River, it incised deep into the Colorado Plateau as the
plateau began to rise. Because of this entrenchment, the broad meanders
of the ancient rivercourse that developed on a relatively flat floodplain
are now preserved in this spectacular canyon where three major meanders
can be viewed. The sandstones and shales seen here are Permian strata that
were deposited at the same time as the limestones at the top of the Grand
||Monument Valley, Utah is situated on the Navajo
tribal land. The rock was sculpted by ancient rivers that meandered through
the area. On rare days, no commercials or movies are being filmed.
|Most of the monuments in Monument Valley were
cut from the two formations seen here. The Upper Triassic Chinle Formation
forms the slope at the base. The oldest known dinosaurs in North America
(Coelophysis) were found in these strata at Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu,
New Mexico. The vertical cliffs are formed in the Lower Jurassic Wingate
Sandstone. Some monuments, however, are volcanic necks called diatremes.
They formed as volcanic rock from deep within the earth rapidly rose to
the surface and solidified within the volcanic conduit. Because volcanic
rocks are generally more resistant to erosion, they remained standing after
the sedimentary rocks were worn away.
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Last updated February 21, 2006