For now we have these huge, uniformly red, rock faces, but these too shall pass. Another reason they are so prominent is that all the earth which was pushed up with the Fountain Formation was much softer and eroded away with time. The Flatirons won’t be around forever though. It makes sense that these special formations needed a special answer for their existence. Geologists speculate that a particularly low-angled subduction of one tectonic plate beneath the other caused mountainous bulges deeper into the North American continent, which pushed up the Flatirons and its neighboring mountains. The Flatirons sits 600 miles from the shore of California, its nearest tectonic plate intersection, aka. Normally a place where two tectonic plates meets creates mountains within 200 miles of the plates. Plate tectonics theories had to come up with an answer for how the Flatirons rose above the plains. Red rocks typical of Fountain Formation in Littleton, CO. How did it get into the air over Boulder? But that means the red rock formed at sea-level. Over time, the clay solidified into feldspar. This sea deposited clay minerals over eons and formed the basis for the Flatirons. Well, geological theories have said that Boulder Colorado and the rest of the Fountain Formation was the shore of an inland sea about 300 million years ago. Other chemicals present in the rock can shade it from pink, to red, and as far as purple. The Fountain Formation stretches from Colorado Springs all the way to Wyoming. The reddish color is due to the concentration of feldspar in the sandstone, which is pinkish in color by itself. This red rock makes up the Red Rocks of Morrison and the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. This sandstone, more appropriately called “arkose” gets its color from the pinkish feldspar contained it it. The Flatirons are Boulder‘s favorite portion of the Fountain Formation, a geological formation of mostly red sandstone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |