Serenade Rocks
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Serenade Rocks
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture & Enhancement
Description
Serenade Valley east of Loveland, Colorado. Wonder why they call it that? Might have something to do with critters howling at night?? Anyway, the rocks on this hillside have been here a very long time. A little history…
About 1 billion years ago, the earth was producing massive amounts of molten rock that would one day amalgamate, drift together and combine, to ultimately form modern continents. In the Colorado region, this molten rock spewed and cooled, forming what we now know as the Precambrian Pikes Peak Granite. Over the next 500 million years, little is known about changes in the sedimentation after the granite was produced. The thinking is at about 500 to 300 million years ago, the region began to sink and sediments began to deposit in the newly formed space. Eroded granite produced sand particles that began to form strata, layers of sediment, in the sinking basin. Sedimentation would continue to take place until about 300 million years ago.
Around 300 million years ago, the sinking suddenly reversed, and the sediment-covered granite began to uplift, giving rise to the Ancestral Rocky Mountains. Over the next 150 million years, during uplift the mountains would continue to erode and cover themselves in their own sediment. Wind, gravity, rainwater, snow, and ice-melt supplied rivers that ultimately carved through the granite mountains and eventually led to their end. The sediment from these mountains lies in the Fountain Formation today found along the Front Range region. Red Rocks Amphitheater outside of Denver, Colorado, is actually set into the Fountain Formation.
At 280 million years ago, sea levels were low and present-day Colorado was part of the super-continent called Pangaea. Sand deserts covered most of the area spreading as dunes as found in the rock record, which is known today as the Lyons Sandstone. These dunes appear to be cross-bedded and show various fossil footprints and leaf imprints in many of the strata making up the section.
30 million years later, the sediment deposition was still taking place with the introduction of the Lykins Formation. This formation can be best attributed to its wavy layers of muddy limestone and signs of stromatolites that thrived in a smelly tidal flat in present-day Colorado. 250 million years ago, the Ancestral Rockies were burying themselves while the shoreline was present during the break-up of Pangaea. This formation began right after Earth's largest extinction 251 million years ago at the Permian–Triassic Boundary. Ninety percent of the planet's marine life was destroyed and a great deal on land as well.
After 100 million years of deposition, a new environment brought rise to a new formation, the Morrison Formation. The Morrison Formation sandstone contains some of the best fossils of the Late Jurassic. It is especially known for its sauropod tracks and bones as well as other dinosaur fossils. As shown by the fossil record, the environment was filled with various types of vegetation such as ferns and Zamites. Although this time period is filled with many types of plants, the grasses had not yet evolved.
The Dakota Sandstone, deposited 100 million years ago towards Colorado's eastern coast, shows evidence of ferns, and dinosaur tracks. Sheets of ripple marks can be seen on some of the strata, confirming the shallow-sea environment.
Over the next 30 million years, the region was covered by a deep sea, the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, depositing large amounts of shale over the area known today as the Pierre Shale. Both the thick section of shale and the marine life fossils found in it including ammonites, skeletons of fish, marine reptiles like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs, and extinct species of sea turtles, along with rare dinosaur and bird remains are found there. Colorado eventually drained from being at the bottom of an ocean to land again, building another fossiliferous rock layer called the Denver Formation. At about 68 million years ago, the Front Range began to rise again due to the Laramide Orogeny occurring in the west.
The Denver Formation contained fossils and bones from dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. While the forests of vegetation, dinosaurs, and other organisms thrived, their reign would come to an end at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, also known as the K-T boundary. Millions of species are obliterated from a meteor impact in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula about 65 million years ago. While this extinction led to the demise of the dinosaurs and other organisms, some life did prevail to repopulate the earth as it recovered from this tremendous disaster. The uplifted Front Range continued to constantly erode and, by around 40 million years ago, the range was once again buried in its own rubble.
Approximately 37 million years ago, a great volcanic eruption took place and covered the landscape in molten hot ash that instantly torched and consumed everything. An entire lush environment was capped in a matter of minutes with 20 feet of extremely resistant rock, rhyolite. Fortunately, life rebounds, and after a few million years, mass floods cut through the rhyolite and eroded much of it as plants and animals began to recolonize the landscape. The mass flooding and erosion of the volcanic rock gave way to the Castle Rock Conglomerate that can be found along the Front Range.
About 10 million years ago, the Front Range began to rise up again and the resistant granite in the heart of the mountains thrust upwards while weaker sediments deposited above it eroded away. As the Front Range rose, streams and recent glaciations during the Quaternary age literally unburied the range by cutting through the weaker sediment and giving rise to the granitic peaks present today. This was the last step in forming the present-day geologic sequence and history of today's Front Range.
Some digital effects were applied to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered images will not contain the Fine Art America watermark.
Image copyright 2020 Jon Burch Photography
Uploaded
January 10th, 2020
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