Field Guide to Plutons, Volcanoes, Faults, Reefs, Dinosaurs, and Possible Glaciation in Selected Areas of Arizona, California, and Nevada

This guidebook, prepared in conjunction with the 2008 joint meeting of the GSA Cordilleran and Rocky Mountain Sections, contains background information and road logs for eleven field trips in Nevada, Arizona, and California. Southern Nevada and adjoining areas contain a rich geologic history spanning the interval from the Paleoproterozoic to the present. Las Vegas lies at or near several critical geological junctures and localities including the structural boundary between the Colorado Plateau and Basin and Range, the physiographic boundary between the Great Basin and the southern Basin and Range, the eastern margin of the Sevier fold-and-thrust belt, the tectonically active Death Valley area, tilted and faulted volcanic-plutonic systems exposing the upper part of the crust, and the enigmatic “amagmatic zone.” With guides in this volume spanning the geologic record from the Ediacaran (late Neoproterozoic) to the Holocene, covering ground from the middle crust to the surface, and looking at topics from tectonics to paleontology, volcanism to glaciation, this volume offers something for everyone.
Ediacaran and early Cambrian reefs of Esmeralda County, Nevada: Non-congruent communities within congruent ecosystems across the Neoproterozoic–Paleozoic boundary
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Published:January 01, 2008
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CiteCitation
Stephen M. Rowland, Lynn K. Oliver, Melissa Hicks, 2008. "Ediacaran and early Cambrian reefs of Esmeralda County, Nevada: Non-congruent communities within congruent ecosystems across the Neoproterozoic–Paleozoic boundary", Field Guide to Plutons, Volcanoes, Faults, Reefs, Dinosaurs, and Possible Glaciation in Selected Areas of Arizona, California, and Nevada, Ernest M. Duebendorfer, Eugene I. Smith
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Abstract
Esmeralda County, Nevada, is extraordinary for the presence of Ediacaran and early Cambrian reefs at several stratigraphic positions. In this road log and field guide we present descriptions and interpretations of the most instructive exposures of three of these reef-rich intervals: (1) the Mount Dunfee section of the Middle Member of the Deep Spring Formation (Ediacaran in age), (2) the Stewart's Mill exposure of the Lower Member of the Poleta Formation (mid-early Cambrian), and (3) an exposure on the north flank of Slate Ridge of reefs near the top of the Harkless Formation (latest early Cambrian). We introduce the term “congruent ecosystems” for ecosystems of different age that occupied similar environments. The Ediacaran reefs of the Deep Spring Formation and the early Cambrian reefs of the Lower Member of the Poleta Formation occupied similar environments but exhibit distinctively different ecological structure. Thus we propose these two reef complexes as our premier example of non-congruent communities within congruent ecosystems.
- Archaeocyatha
- Basin and Range Province
- biogenic structures
- bioherms
- Cambrian
- communities
- ecosystems
- Ediacaran
- Esmeralda County Nevada
- field trips
- guidebook
- Invertebrata
- Lower Cambrian
- Neoproterozoic
- Nevada
- North America
- outcrops
- paleoecology
- Paleozoic
- Poleta Formation
- Precambrian
- Proterozoic
- reef environment
- road log
- sedimentary structures
- stromatolites
- United States
- upper Precambrian
- Vendian