Late Cretaceous to Quaternary Strata and Fossils of Texas: Field Excursions Celebrating 125 Years of GSA and Texas Geology, GSA South-Central Section Meeting, Austin, Texas, April 2013
This volume, prepared in conjunction with the 47th Annual Meeting of the GSA South-Central Section, contains four guides that focus on sedimentology and paleontology in Texas. A theme of exploration threads its way through the trips, all of which can trace their roots to the work of early geologic explorers. One trip retraces part of the 1889 Dumble survey that explored the geology along the Colorado River between Austin and La Grange, Texas, while another takes readers to an internationally famous Quaternary vertebrate paleontology site, studied since the beginning of the twentieth century, inside Friesenhahn Cave in the central Texas Hill Country. Another guide visits Paleocene- to Eocene-age sediments derived from the Rocky Mountains and transported via rivers to the Houston Embayment, building out the continental shelf, while a fourth explores Late Cretaceous Gulf Series strata in the Dallas area.
Late Cretaceous strata and vertebrate fossils of North Texas
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Published:January 01, 2013
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CiteCitation
Louis L. Jacobs, Michael J. Polcyn, Dale A. Winkler, Timothy S. Myers, Jamell G. Kennedy, John B. Wagner, 2013. "Late Cretaceous strata and vertebrate fossils of North Texas", Late Cretaceous to Quaternary Strata and Fossils of Texas: Field Excursions Celebrating 125 Years of GSA and Texas Geology, GSA South-Central Section Meeting, Austin, Texas, April 2013, Brian B. Hunt, Elizabeth J. Catlos
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ABSTRACT
Outcrops of Late Cretaceous Gulf Series strata (Woodbine, Eagle Ford, and Austin) in the Dallas area expose middle Cenomanian to the early Campanian (96 to ˜ 83 Ma) rocks, which are well known in the subsurface of the oil-rich East Texas Basin. Together with the underlying Comanche Series and overlying younger Gulf Series, this set of strata provides a record of the last 50 million years of the Cretaceous. Although both marine and terrestrial vertebrates are known in this interval, the Late Cretaceous record is primarily marine. On this field trip, sites are visited that have yielded sharks, bony fish, turtles, dinosaurs, crocodiles, pterosaurs, mammals, long- and short-necked plesiosaurs, and a classic record of mosasaur evolution.
- Archosauria
- Austin Group
- Balcones fault zone
- biogenic structures
- bioturbation
- Campanian
- Cenomanian
- Chordata
- Cretaceous
- cross-bedding
- Dallas County Texas
- Dallas Texas
- Denton County Texas
- Diapsida
- dinosaurs
- Eagle Ford Formation
- East Texas Basin
- field trips
- fossil localities
- Gulfian
- Lacertilia
- Lepidosauria
- lower Campanian
- marine environment
- Mesozoic
- Mosasauridae
- planar bedding structures
- Plesiosauria
- Reptilia
- Sabine Uplift
- San Marcos Arch
- Sauropterygia
- sedimentary structures
- Squamata
- Tarrant County Texas
- Tetrapoda
- Texas
- tracks
- unconformities
- United States
- Upper Cretaceous
- Vertebrata
- Woodbine Formation
- northern Texas
- middle Cenomanian
- Comanche Series
- Atco Formation