Grand Canyon Layers

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The lithology of the Grand Canyon is one of most studied in the world. The main reason is that it shows ages of rock layers from 270 million years old, limestone, to 1.7 billion years old, schist. There are approximately 40 sedimentary rock layers that can be seen in the Grand Canyon. Along with that, there are currently 14 unconformities that have been found. The Grand Canyon can be broken apart into three primary parts to more easily understand it. The first or bottom layer known as Vishnu basement rocks consists of: schists, granites, and elves chasm gneiss (Van Der Pluijm & Marshak, 2004). The second or middle layer known as Grand Canyon supergroup rocks consists of: Sixtymile Formation, Chuar Group, Nankoweap Formation, and Unkar Group. …show more content…
It consists of metamorphic and igneous rocks. This layer was formed around 1.7 billion years ago from thousands of feet of volcanic ash, clay, and sand. The particles were deposited in a sea/backarc basin. During compressional tectonic activity, compression, it lifted the layer out of the sea and it was later buried. Approximately 14 miles deep (Neyman, 2013). At these pressures and temperatures it turned the layer into metamorphic rock. After this event, more plate tectonic activity occurred and a collision happened with what is known as North America. At the subduction zone, magma was coming up as the plate was subducted. The magma rose into the metamorphic rock and cooled into granite. The last part is the gneiss for the Vishnu basement rocks. The granite was metamorphosed into gneiss. During this time period, something very important happened: The Great Unconformity. It is said to have taken around 300 million years to erode what was created from the tectonic active to this layer. It turned mountains into hills, and is seen all around the world: It did not just happen in the region of the Grand Canyon. The unfortunate part is, when unconformities occur, history is lost. The Great Unconformity is a nonconformity. A nonconformity is a type of uniformity that can be defined as, “Strata deposited on a basement of older crystalline rocks. The crystalline rocks may be either plutonic or metamorphic (Van Der …show more content…
During this time period, also known as the Precambrian Eon, tectonic plate activity was occurring in the North America area. Which resulted in a failed basin rift. It extended from the Grand Canyon to Lake Superior and to Montana’s Glacier National Park (Neyman, 2013). This extensive area filled with water. During the time period of 750 million years to 1.3 billion years ago, there were nine different layers that turned into sedimentary rock layers. Within the Unkar Group, the oldest fossil from a layer that can be seen in the Grand Canyon was found; a
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