A Geology Field Trip In My Colorado Front Range Neighborhood!

 

I live in an area along the Colorado Front Range rich in geological features and natural beauty!

We can hike in many areas and see geological formations called the Permian era Lyons Formation (whitish compressed sandstone area), the Pennsylvanian era Fountain Formation (red rocks), and the Cretaceous era Dakota Formation  (sandstone, clays, and shale) which were formed many hundreds of millions of years ago.  

A nearby national landmark Dinosaur Rridge, which was once the home of many stegosaurus dinosaurs is also a Dakota Formation. You can see a prior blog post on this link where we visited Dinosaur Ridge for another geologic tour by a geologist that we attended.

Our community's historical society hosted a "Geology Field Trip" one day this summer with our members and three residents with scientific backgrounds in geology and paleontology. They volunteered to take us on an educational three-hour tour of our area to learn more about its geologic history. They made a wonderful multi-page handout for each member with scientific definitions, geologic timelines, and definitions which was very interesting and helpful during our tour.

An example of Precambrian Metamorphic Rock

They first discussed the geology of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado

The Rocky Mountains took shape during an intense period of plate tectonic activity that resulted in much of the rugged landscape of Western North America

In the southern Rocky Mountains, near present-day Colorado and New Mexico, the Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks were disturbed by mountain-building shifts which produced the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. The uplift formed two large mountainous islands, located roughly in the current locations of the Front Range and the San Juan Mountains. They consisted largely of Precambrian metamorphic rock, forced upward through layers of limestone and laid down in the shallow sea. The mountains eroded throughout the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras leaving extensive deposits of sedimentary rock.

We moved to another area where we examined whitish rock formations among red rock.

Stromatolite formations

We learned that the white-colored rock was a product of the late Permian era of about 250 million years ago, in which a great extinction took place of many land and sea-bound life. In this post-extinction scene along what was then a slimy slimy mounds known as stromatolites formed. The stromatolites were located in shallow and salty pools and were an unlikely partnership of bacteria and algae. The ones in our area are Permian/Triassic era Lykins Stromolites.

 

A hogback formation

Across from the stromolites, we could see a familiar sight in our area a hogback formation.  Hogbacks are a typical regional topographic expression of outcrops of steeply dipping strata, commonly sedimentary strata, that consist of alternating beds of hard, well-lithified strata, i.e. sandstone and limestone, and either weak or loosely cemented strata, i.e. shale, mudstone, and marl.

We now moved to another area and saw a Late Jurassic Morrison Formation where dinosaur quarries are often found, such as those in the aforementioned Dinosaur Ridge. The geologists went over the different combinations of geologic formations in this area which were formed 150 million years ago and the paleontologist held up a dinosaur Apatosaurus bone that he had unearthed on a scientific expedition in Wyoming.  We were all able to hold the bone and feel its weight and size.

Finally, visited a creek bed where young residents found a prehistoric Mammoth jaw and tusk in 2009. The original specimens were donated to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, but we were able to hold a model. Look at those giant molars! The Colorado Front Range area has been the location of extinct Ice Age animals and artifacts from later human occupation from 11,000 years ago. We visited an area called Lamb Spring Archeological Preserve a few years ago--you can read that blog post on this link. There, in 1960, the land's owner and rancher, Charles Lamb, was digging a stock pond at the site of a natural spring. He found several large bones that were identified by geologists with the US Geological Survey, as the remains of mammoth, horse, camel, and bison

Our tour guides could have explained more, but our three-hour time limit was up. They promised to organize similar tours in other areas in the future, and we all eagerly expressed our appreciation for all we learned this time and our enthusiasm for taking a future tour.

It seems appropriate that a premier engineering and applied science Colorado School of Mines is located in Golden Colorado. The university has a spectacular geologic museum with samples from Colorado, as well as samples from around the world. We often visit, and if you enjoy geology you can see a two-part blog post I wrote about one visit to their museum on this Part One link and this Part Two link.

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