For those who know how to read the rocks, the exposed cliffs of Castle Country are an open book of geologic history. Each different layer is like a page of that book. The study of those layers is called sequential stratigraphy, a specialty of a company called Subsurface Consultants and Associates.
Last week, SCA geologist David Little and his father William, a professor at BYU Idaho, were leading a group of geological professionals from Chevron Nigeria and the Bureau of Oceans and Energy Management in Louisiana on a tour of Spring Canyon and its offshoots.
Why here? “Rocks are not this well exposed elsewhere,” explained David Little. While people elsewhere may have to drill deep core samples to look beneath the surface, millions of years worth of prehistory are easily visible.
William Little, the team leader, explained that long ago, this area was very much like the river deltas of the Gulf of Mexico, with varying types of sand and silt being deposited. The stratigraphy tells the story of how things changed as the region was gradually uplifted more than a mile from sea level
While vegetation here was as lush as the bogs and bayous of today, there was a difference in animal life that visitors to the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price can see: dinosaur tracks in the mud and coal.
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