{"id":519,"date":"2001-11-01T23:12:01","date_gmt":"2001-11-01T23:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/?p=519"},"modified":"2020-08-18T23:12:32","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T23:12:32","slug":"the-great-unconformity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/2001\/11\/01\/the-great-unconformity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Unconformity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reading the local paper can pay off in unexpected ways. One week this little article popped up in the “Living” section: “Geological Site sheds light on Las Vegas Valley’s Past”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turns out that there is something in geological circles known as the Great Unconformity. I’ll let hydrogeologist Nick Saines (http:\/\/members.aol.com\/saines1\/Unconf.html<\/a>) describe it: “The Great Unconformity is the contact between the Precambrian and the Cambrian – a gap of 1.2 billion years – one fourth of the age of the Earth. It is not just the time missing that makes the Great Unconformity great; after all, Precambrian granite overlain by Recent alluvium or dune sand has a greater time gap. No, the Great Unconformity, as named by one of my heroes – Major John Wesley Powell – in 1869, is the contact between the Primeval World (when life was mostly single-celled creatures), and the world in which the continents and the life upon them really began to evolve.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pretty cool stuff. It turns out, this unique geological feature can be seen in only a few places. One of them is at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Another is 100 yards off Lake Mead Boulevard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that the mountains at one side of the Las Vegas Valley were created through an interesting process that results in the exposure of this very early portion of strata.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After reading this article, I suggested to Lisa that we drive out there and take a look at it. It’s not every day you get to put your finger on the Great Unconformity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we did, and afterwards we walked to the top of the hill and got a good view of the Las Vegas Valley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading the local paper can pay off in unexpected ways. One week this little article popped up in the “Living” section: “Geological Site sheds light on Las Vegas Valley’s Past”. It turns out that there is something in geological circles known as the Great Unconformity. I’ll let hydrogeologist Nick Saines (http:\/\/members.aol.com\/saines1\/Unconf.html) describe it: “The Great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spacefold.com\/colin\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}