Peekaboo Loop, Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah, USA
The Bryce Canyon area shows a record of deposition that spans from the last part of the Cretaceous period and the first half of the Cenozoic era. The ancient depositional environment of region around what is now the park varied: * The Dakota Sandstone and the Tropic Shale were deposited in the warm, shallow waters of the advancing and retreating Cretaceous Seaway (outcrops of these rocks are found just outside park borders). * The colorful Claron Formation that the park's delicate hoodoos are carved from was laid down as sediments in a system of cool streams and lakes that existed from 63 to about 40 million years ago (from the Paleocene to the Eocene epochs). Different sediment types were laid down as the lakes deepened and became shallow and as the shoreline and river deltas migrated. Hoodoos can form strange shapes due to random fluctuations in erosion patterns and variations between the rock strata.
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Photo credit: © Christophe Testi / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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