The Uinta Mountains are a large east-west trending mountain range (on of the few in North and South America). It is made of a 4-km thick Neoproterozoic siciliclastic succession. These strikingly monotonous sediments are hypothesized to record the development of a large E-W trending intracratonic basin during the early stages of the breakup of Rodinia. […]

This weeks fab five comes from my old stomping grounds: the Colorado Plateau. Prof. Tom Morris (in the aquamarine shirt) standing atop Glass Mountain in Capitol Reef National Park, Utah. Glass Mountain is a large diapir of selenite. Selenite is a variety of gypsum (CaSO4•2H2O) in the form of glassy crystals. Glass Mountain formed as […]

Like most Utah-educated geologists, field trips began along the Wasatch Front and Colorado Plateau. In Utah, we are extremely spoiled with world class geology a stones throw from all of the Earth Science Departments in the state. My geologic interests waxed and waned with the semesters. While studying sedimentology, I wanted to be a petroleum geologist. […]