The lingo and language of geology is chock full of tongue-twisting terms that hardly anyone can understand, much less pronounce. Geologists are all part of a clubby clic. If you can master the language you can generally pass muster and get the secret handshake to join the club. But you have to know your plutons from your pleistocenes.
The decoding of the City of Rocks geology is a grand jigsaw puzzle for geologists.
It's giant juxtaposition of Early Earth with ancient epochs. The rocks range from 2.5-billion years to a mere 25-million years old. Such a stunning span is enough to make even the most grizzled geologist smile sweetly.
The Almo Pluton plays prominently in the City of Rocks pedigree. The word pluton originates from Pluto, the ancient Roman god of the underworld. The use of the name and concept goes back to the beginnings of the science of geology in the late 1700s and the then hotly debated theories of Neptunism, Vulcanism and Plutonism regarding the origin of basalt. One can imagine the pompous elite savants of The Age of Enlightment debating the "isms" of their era.
If you really want to see a shining sample of bread and butter rock-talk, check this awesome phrase describing some of geology related to the City of Rocks: "Oligocene granodiorite to muscovite pegmatite, pegmatitic granite, and mylonitized granitic injection gneiss." Sounds pretty nice to me, how 'bout you?
We're developing a Google Site to house more of this arcane lingo. (Click here to visit the site.) One of these epochs, we will get it all figured out. In the meantime, you're on your own as far as geology goes.
In a nutshell, here is a simple (sic) single sentence description of the geology of the place:
"The City of Rocks National Reserve encompasses a scenic landscape of fins, spires, and domes eroded from the Oligocene Almo Pluton and the Archean Green Creek Complex in the core of the Albion Range metamorphic core complex."
Just remember--what you see is what you get!
No comments:
Post a Comment