Exploring the Geological Wonders of Colorado

1133 Words3 Pages

Kate Lonadier
Mrs. Fowler
2017SPGEL-111-NDY1
5 March 2017
Colorado Geology Report

Within Colorado’s borders lies the home of 104,185 square miles of geology. Within those 104,185 square miles you will find many different types of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. Colorado is split into five physiographic provinces: the Middle Rocky Mountains, the Wyoming Basin, the Colorado Plateau, the Southern Rocky Mountains, and the Great Plains (“Physiographic,” 2013). Inside these provinces are millions of years worth of geological time that tell a story of volcanic eruptions, uplift and erosion, deposition, and metamorphism. The Middle Rocky Mountains are home to the Dinosaur National Monument. In Dinosaur National Monument you …show more content…

In Colorado you can find both intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks that date all the way back to the Precambrian era. According to Colorado’s Geological Survey's website “at one time, about 2/3 of Colorado was covered by [extrusive] rocks but much has eroded” (“Volcanic rocks,” 2013). Today, Colorado is home to many different types of intrusive igneous rocks, such as: alkalic complexes, batholiths, dikes, kimberlite diatremes, plugs, sills, and stocks. If you are looking for metamorphic rocks in Colorado, you will certainly find gneiss, schist, amphibolite, and quartzite. Theses rocks have been formed by both contact metamorphism and regional metamorphism. Metamorphic rocks are also found mostly in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Some of the oldest rocks in Colorado are metamorphic and the date back to the Archean period, 2.7 billion-year-old. These ancient rocks can be found around the city of Beaver …show more content…

Colorado is home to eleven national parks, with different stories to be told in each one! One of those parks is the Rocky Mountain National Park. In this park alone you can find all three rock types of all ages. For example, there is Silver Plume granite that “intruded upward into the metamorphic rocks about 300 million years after the formation of the Proterozoic mountains” and can be found in the eastern side of the park (“Geology resources division,” 2007). Geologist are unsure what caused this

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