The Geologic Story of Canyonlands National ParkLohman, Stanley William
Science
The Geologic Story of Canyonlands National Park
Lohman, Stanley William
Canyonlands National Park (Utah) -- Guidebooks; Geology -- Utah -- Canyonlands National Park -- Guidebooks
The evaporation ponds shown in figures 31 and 71 are in Shafer Basin, a
synclinal basin separating the Cane Creek anticline and Shafer dome. We
cross the axis of Shafer Basin about 2 miles below the county line.
Further downstream is Shafer dome, a closed anticlinal bulge just beyond
the W-shaped bend in the river as shown in figure 29. Parts of the dome
also show up in the lower right of figure 13 and the lower left of
figure 15. From almost anywhere in the Goose Neck, the sharp bend of the
river shown in figure 15, we get an excellent view of Dead Horse Point
some 2,000 feet above.
Robert R. Norman (oral commun. Feb. 27, 1973) described to me a small
petrified forest—which he said resembles a log jam—in the eastern part
of the Shafer dome, at mileage 39 (Baars and Molenaar, 1971, p. 65),
just north of this point about half way between the river and the jeep
trail below Dead Horse Point. He estimated that there probably are 20 to
30 logs, some of which are as large as 18 inches in diameter and more
than 20 feet long, and also described a stump about 3 feet in diameter.
They occur in red beds at about the middle of the Rico Formation, hence
could be either Pennsylvanian or Permian in age (figs. 9, 80). The
original wood has been replaced by silica (SiO₂) and stained a dark
reddish brown, as shown in figure 72.
Mr. Norman and his brother also discovered many teeth of a primitive
sharklike fish in the Rico Formation at the same general locality as the
petrified wood and also in the Rico on the Cane Creek anticline. I
submitted two of the teeth to Dr. David H. Dunkle, curator of the
Cleveland Museum of Natural History, who reported them to be “one tooth
of the cochliodont ‘shark’ _Deltodus_, and one tooth of the petalodont
‘shark’ _Petalodus_” (written commun., May 22, 1973).
About 4 miles below the Goose Neck, we enter Canyonlands National Park
and remain in the park almost to the north end of Lake Powell.
About 6½ miles into the park, at the north end of a bend much like the
Goose Neck, is the mouth of Lathrop Canyon, where many boaters stop for
lunch and where a side road connects with the White Rim Trail (fig. 1).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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