The badlands at the Zabriskie Point (Death Valley, California, USA) rest upon a mudstone foundation. In the prehistoric lakes of Death Valley, fine grained sediments were deposited to form soft rocks. The clay minerals in the mudstone are shaped like tiny plates, which helps create the layers. The combination of the almost impermeable mudstone and Death Valley’s low rainfall makes plant grow ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: Tones of sand
With rocks dating as far back as the Precambrian, mountain building events, violent volcanic eruptions and being covered, on and off, by shallow seas, Death Valley’s geological history is long and complex. Back in the Cenozoic (65 to 30 million years ago), following a turbulent period which saw the eruption of volcanoes (which in time would form the Sierra Nevada of California) and regional uplift ...[Read More]