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An unconformity is a buried erosional or non-depositional surface separating two rock masses or strata of different ages, indicating that sediment deposition was not continuous. In general, the older layer was exposed to erosion for an interval of time before deposition of the younger layer, but the term is used to describe any break in the ...
Little is known about the history of the oldest exposed rocks in the area due to extensive metamorphism.This somber, gray, almost featureless crystalline complex is composed of originally sedimentary and igneous rocks with large quantities of quartz and feldspar mixed in. [1] The original rocks were transformed to contorted schist and gneiss, making their original parentage almost unrecognizable.
The geology of the Grand Canyon area includes one of the most complete and studied sequences of rock on Earth. The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old. Most were deposited in warm, shallow seas and near ...
The Great Unconformity of Powell in the Grand Canyon is a regional unconformity that separates the Tonto Group from the underlying, faulted and tilted sedimentary rocks of the Grand Canyon Supergroup and vertically foliated metamorphic and igneous rocks of the Vishnu Basement Rocks. The unconformity between the Tonto Group and the Vishnu ...
Throughout the majority of it extent, the Tonto Group lies unconformably on underlying Precambrian rocks forming the Great Unconformity. This contact is either an angular unconformity truncating tilted strata of the Grand Canyon Supergroup or a nonconformity cut into the crystalline Vishnu Basement Rocks. The base of the Tonto Group consists of ...
The Kaibab Limestone is an assemblage of sedimentary rock types. It consists of a complexity of inter fingering and inter bedded carbonate and siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. In addition, intense post-depositional ( diagenetic ) changes have produced a more composition variation by the alteration of limestone to dolomite and the silicification ...
The Neoproterozoic Nankoweap Formation (pronounced Nan' coe weep), is a thin sequence of distinctive red beds that consist of reddish brown and tan sandstones and subordinate siltstones and mudrocks that unconformably overlie basaltic lava flows of the Cardenas Basalt of the Unkar Group and underlie the sedimentary strata of the Galeros Formation of the Chuar Group.
The Mesoproterozoic formations in the Grand Canyon are overlain by the 850 million year old, Neoproterozoic Chuar Group and Sixtymile Formation sedimentary rocks. The Great Unconformity is a famous gap in the stratigraphic record of the Grand Canyon of 900 million years between Proterozoic granitic rocks and Cambrian marine sediments. For the ...