Tag Archive for: POTD

Wasatch Range, Utah & Wasatch Counties, Utah
Photographer: Robert F. Biek

Framed by blooming gray rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus nauseosus) above the east shore of Deer Creek Reservoir, Mt. Timpanogos is formed of Pennsylvanian-age, shallow- marine limestone and sandstone of the Oquirrh Formation. The small patch of snow is in Cascade Cirque, one of several glacier-carved basins on the east side of the 11,749-foot-tall mountain.

East of the Green River, Grand County, Utah.

Photographer: Don DeBlieux

A summer evening arrives with the promise of cooler temperatures at the UGS paleontology camp near the Crystal Geyser Dinosaur Quarry.

Capitol Reef National Park, Garfield County, Utah
Photographer: Paul Kuehne

The Waterpocket Fold affords a wonderful view of the geology of Grand Gulch. The Entrada Sandstone (reddish-orange rock on the right) and Navajo Sandstone (pale-orange rock on the left and middle distance) were formed in a desert  environment beginning about 185 million years ago in the Jurassic Period.

Cookie Jar Butte,Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Kane County.
Photographer: Jim Davis

Cookie Jar Butte, named for the gigantic, cylindrical weathering pits that dot its peninsula, towers above Padre Bay on Lake Powell.

Dollar Lake, High Uintas Wilderness, Duchesne County, Utah
Photographer: Mike Hylland

To the south of Dollar Lake in the Uinta Mountains, cliffs of Precambrian-age sedimentary strata rise abruptly at the head of the Henrys Fork basin. The leftmost peak lit by the morning sun is Utah’s highest mountain, Kings Peak (13,528 feet), which was named for Clarence King, first director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Dugway Proving Ground, Tooele County, Utah.
Photographer: Don Clark

Locally known as Devils Postpile, this andesite intrusion in the southern Cedar Mountains displays well developed columnar cooling joints.

 Southeast of Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah
Photographer: Michael Vanden Berg

The White Pine rock slide covers the floor of Little Cottonwood Canyon with boulders of granitic rock of the Tertiary-age Little Cottonwood stock. These rocks broke loose from the north side of the glacially-carved canyon several thousand years ago.

North of Moab, Grand County, Utah
Photographer: Carole McCalla

A 15-inch-long theropod dinosaur track at the Copper Ridge Sauropod Tracksite. This Jurassic-age site includes the first sauropod tracks reported in Utah.

Fishlake National Forest, Piute County, Utah
Photographer: Tyler Knudsen

Storm clouds gather over Mount Belknap (12,137 feet) in the Tushar Mountains, Utah’s third-highest range. The smooth, rounded slopes of this summit ridge are composed of easily eroded volcanic ash and lava flows. The mountains are part of the eruptive center of the Marysvale volcanic field, an area of intense volcanic activity between 32 and 22 million years ago.

San Rafael Swell, Sevier County
Photographer: Robert F. Biek

Alluvial and wind-blown sediment partly conceals the Jurassic-age Entrada Sandstone in the Last Chance Desert, which occupies the axis of the Last Chance anticline. The narrow, jagged, black ridge at the center of the photo is a basaltic dike of probable late Tertiary age (3 to 5 million years old) that intrudes the Entrada Sandstone.