Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Geology
Tectonic shifts and volcanic activity known as the Laramide Revolution shook, folded and
molded the Colorado landscape, where granite peaks rise nearly 10,000ft above adjacent
plains. Colorado's highest point is 14,433ft Mt Elbert. Behind the Front Range lie several
scattered mountain ranges and broad plateaus; their most notable geologic feature is the
spectacular Rocky Mountain Trench, a fault valley 1100 miles long.
Glaciers also shaped the land. The Laurentide Ice Sheet left deep sediments as it receded
into the Arctic during the warming of the Quaternary period. A cordilleran glacier system
formed at higher altitudes in the Rockies, leaving moraines, lakes, cirques and jagged
alpine landforms as they melted. Their melting also formed massive rivers that eroded and
shaped the state's spectacular canyons on the Colorado Plateau to the southwest.
The Spanish Peaks, in southern Colorado near La Veta, are not part of the Rocky Mountains, but rather ex-
tinct volcanoes.
Dinosaurs
Although dinosaurs dominated the planet for over 100 million years, only a few places
have the proper geological and climatic conditions to preserve their skeletons as fossils and
their tracks as permanent evolutionary place holders. Colorado is near the top of that list. If
you or your loved ones are dinophiles, you've come to the right state.
Back in the
really
olden days - like during the Jurassic (208 to 144 million years ago)
and Cretaceous (144 to 65 million years ago) periods - Colorado was a decidedly different
place. The Rockies hadn't yet risen and Pangea had only recently split (what's a million
years?), meaning present-day Colorado was close to the equator.
Most, if not all, of the sites where fossilized dinosaur bones were found en masse are
thought to have been in or near a floodplain. These areas were important water sources dur-
ing wet season, but could be bone dry in dry season. Often dinosaurs would migrate for
miles and days and weeks in search of water. If they arrived at the floodplain at the wrong
time of year, many simply died. Winds covered their bodies in layers of dust, and later
floods further coated their bones in mud. It takes many thousands of layers of dust and mud
and approximately 12,000 years for these bones to become fossils. It also takes a pressur-
ized environment, which is why layers of water over the earth is a key (but not vital) in-
gredient to fossilization.
