Navajo Sandstone
| Navajo Sandstone Stratigraphic range: Early Jurassic (Toarcian and Pliensbachian): 191–174 Ma |
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|---|---|
| Type | Geological formation |
| Unit of | Glen Canyon Group |
| Underlies | Carmel Formation and Page and Temple Cap sandstones, separated by J-1 and J-2 unconformities |
| Overlies | Kayenta Formation with conformable and interfingering contact |
| Thickness | 2,300 feet (700 m) maximum |
| Lithology | |
| Primary | eolian sandstone |
| Other | lacustrine limestone and dolomite |
| Location | |
| Region | Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah |
| Country | United States of America |
| Extent | 102,300 sq mi (264,955.8 km2) - original extent of the Navajo Sand Sea may have been 2.5 times larger than this remaining outcrop |
| Type section | |
| Named for | Navajo country |
| Named by | Gregory and Stone (1917) |
Navajo Sandstone is a geologic formation in the Glen Canyon Group that is spread across the U.S. states of southern Nevada, northern Arizona, northwest Colorado, and Utah as part of the Colorado Plateau province of the United States.
The Navajo Sandstone formation is particularly prominent in southern Utah, where it forms the main attractions of a number of national parks and monuments including Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area,Zion National Park, Capitol Reef National Park, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and Canyonlands National Park.
Navajo Sandstone frequently overlies and interfingers with the Kayenta Formation of the Glen Canyon Group. Together, these formations can result in immense vertical cliffs of up to 2,200 feet (670 m). Atop the cliffs, Navajo Sandstone often appears as massive rounded domes and bluffs that are generally white in color.
Navajo Sandstone frequently occurs as spectacular cliffs, cuestas, domes, and bluffs rising from the desert floor. It can be distinguished from adjacent Jurassic sandstones by its white to light pink color, meter-scale cross-bedding, and distinctive rounded weathering.
The wide range of colors exhibited by the Navajo Sandstone reflect a long history of alteration by groundwater and other subsurface fluids over the last 190 million years. The different colors, except for white, are caused by the presence of varying mixtures and amounts of hematite, goethite, and limonite filling the pore space within the quartz sand comprising the Navajo Sandstone. The iron in these strata originally arrived via the erosion of iron-bearing silicate minerals.
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Wikipedia