Today, the nearest beach is about 12 hours from Montezuma County. But 100 million years ago, it was a different story, explained Mancos geologist Jon Callender at the Cortez Cultural Center on Mar. 4.<\/p>\n
Callender\u2019s presentation, \u201cGeology and Resources of the Four Corners,\u201d touched on how the area\u2019s iconic rock formations came about.<\/p>\n
The geological formations in Mancos and Cortez, including the sandstone cliffs of Mesa Verde National Park, were largely deposited between 100 to 75 million years ago, he explained, when the Western Interior Seaway covered the middle of the continent.<\/p>\n
\u201cMancos and Cliffhouse are beach sands. \u2026 In this area, we have some of the greatest evidence in the world of the in-and-out sea phenomenon,\u201d said Callender. \u201cThat\u2019s what we see in Cortez \u2013 we live on a beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
During this time period, the sea often advanced and retreated, depositing different types of sediment each time. About 100 million years ago, when the sea edge first reached the Montezuma County and the Mesa Verde area, it brought with it layers of beach-like sand. Millions of years later, this sediment was hardened and cemented into the Dakota Sandstone Formation, which today forms the base beneath the park and Montezuma Valley to the north, Calendar said.<\/p>\n
The Mancos shale, the gray rock that is visible at the base of the mesa in Montezuma Valley, was formed by the same phenomenon about 90 million years ago.<\/p>\n
Another key point of Callender\u2019s presentation was using present scientific occurrences to get a fuller picture of the patterns of the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at processes going on today and can see what went on in the past; the present is the key to the past,\u201d said Callender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
‘We live on a beach,’ Callender says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[188],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-dolores-star"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113996"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}