Cliffs of Ghost Ranch
Location: Ghost Ranch - near Abiquiu, NM
Year: 1991
Merckslides catalogue number: 06-17008
Comments: This was an overnight stopover during GEO660. Although there were no projects there, we were all eager to explore, and wandered far and wide. Three rock units are visible here. The Chinle Formation forms the brown badlands at the bottom. This is a very fossiliferous unit of the Late Triassic (Carnian). Ghost Ranch is the site of a mass death assemblage of the primitive theropod Coeolohysis and has yielded many well preserved specimens. Above it, the Jurassic age Entrada Formation records the presence of a Sahara-like sand sea. At the top are little bits of the floodplain deposits of the Morrison Formation. Farther north, this unit yields the classic Late Jurassic dinosaurs of the American West.
