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ENLARGE
Noel Ludwig
Fossils are all around us here in western Colorado, though they may be hard to see.
One nearby spot that hosts dinosaur fossils is on private land southeast of New Castle. It sits on the south bank of the Colorado River and is surrounded by a cement wall that was built to protect the remaining bones.
A site that you can visit without permission runs along Highway 6 & 24, just east of downtown New Castle. If you look closely at the tilted rocks there, you'll see squiggly lines etched into the rock. These are called trace fossils, and are the paths left by ancient worms and crawling creatures as they searched for food in the sandy mud of an ancient shallow sea. Elsewhere in this rock formation, you may find fossils of leaves, and even fish and shellfish.
Even closer to home is the natural gas you may be using to heat your home or light your stove. This gas — and the oil, coal, and oil shale that may have formed along with it — is derived from the remains of plants and animals that lived long ago.
To the west of Glenwood Springs and Carbondale lies the Grand Hogback, a long ridge created by the uplift of the mountains to the east. This ridge stretches from Redstone north to Meeker, and separates the Rocky Mountain region to the east from the flatter Colorado Plateau to the west. Exposed in this ridge are some of the rock layers targeted by mining of our area's fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas. The plants and animals that have been converted into these fuels lived in the Cretaceous, at the same time as the last group of dinosaurs. Some of our area's natural gas gets pumped directly into homes; but most of it goes into the national distribution system, from which some of it makes its way back to us.
The Colorado Plateau, which stretches west and southwest past the Grand Canyon, is a curious area to geologists. It escaped relatively unscathed by the uplift of mountain ranges to the east, and by the stretching of crust to the west that created the valleys and mountains of Nevada's Basin and Range. Geologists think this stability may be due to the plateau's thick layers of sedimentary rock, which acted like a splint to strengthen the crust there. The plateau did warp slightly, however, to form gentle folds called anticlines. Natural gas has traveled upward along sedimentary layers to collect at the peaks of these folds, from where it is extracted by those drilling rigs you see as you travel west down Interstate 70.
So fossils are all around us, even in our homes, if we just know where to look and what to look for.
Noel Ludwig, Ph.D., is an adjunct instructor at Colorado Mountain College, teaching courses in physical and environmental geology. He is also a hydrologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Silt.
One nearby spot that hosts dinosaur fossils is on private land southeast of New Castle. It sits on the south bank of the Colorado River and is surrounded by a cement wall that was built to protect the remaining bones.
A site that you can visit without permission runs along Highway 6 & 24, just east of downtown New Castle. If you look closely at the tilted rocks there, you'll see squiggly lines etched into the rock. These are called trace fossils, and are the paths left by ancient worms and crawling creatures as they searched for food in the sandy mud of an ancient shallow sea. Elsewhere in this rock formation, you may find fossils of leaves, and even fish and shellfish.
Even closer to home is the natural gas you may be using to heat your home or light your stove. This gas — and the oil, coal, and oil shale that may have formed along with it — is derived from the remains of plants and animals that lived long ago.
To the west of Glenwood Springs and Carbondale lies the Grand Hogback, a long ridge created by the uplift of the mountains to the east. This ridge stretches from Redstone north to Meeker, and separates the Rocky Mountain region to the east from the flatter Colorado Plateau to the west. Exposed in this ridge are some of the rock layers targeted by mining of our area's fossil fuels — coal, oil and natural gas. The plants and animals that have been converted into these fuels lived in the Cretaceous, at the same time as the last group of dinosaurs. Some of our area's natural gas gets pumped directly into homes; but most of it goes into the national distribution system, from which some of it makes its way back to us.
The Colorado Plateau, which stretches west and southwest past the Grand Canyon, is a curious area to geologists. It escaped relatively unscathed by the uplift of mountain ranges to the east, and by the stretching of crust to the west that created the valleys and mountains of Nevada's Basin and Range. Geologists think this stability may be due to the plateau's thick layers of sedimentary rock, which acted like a splint to strengthen the crust there. The plateau did warp slightly, however, to form gentle folds called anticlines. Natural gas has traveled upward along sedimentary layers to collect at the peaks of these folds, from where it is extracted by those drilling rigs you see as you travel west down Interstate 70.
So fossils are all around us, even in our homes, if we just know where to look and what to look for.
Noel Ludwig, Ph.D., is an adjunct instructor at Colorado Mountain College, teaching courses in physical and environmental geology. He is also a hydrologist for the Bureau of Land Management in Silt.
