Madison EarthCache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(not chosen)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
Madison
The Mississippian is a subperiod in the geologic timescale or a
subsystem of the geologic record. It is the earliest/lowermost of
two subperiods of the Carboniferous period lasting from roughly 359
to 318 Ma (million years ago). As with most other geochronologic
units, the rock beds that define the Mississippian are well
identified, but the exact start and end dates are uncertain by a
few million years. The Mississippian is so named because rocks with this age are exposed in the Mississippi River valley. In North
America, where the interval consists primarily of marine limestone’s, it was in the past treated as a full-fledged geologic
period between the Devonian and the Pennsylvanian. In Europe, the
Mississippian and Pennsylvanian are one more-or-less continuous
sequence of lowland continental deposits and are grouped together
as the Carboniferous system, and sometimes called the Upper
Carboniferous and Lower Carboniferous instead. During the
Mississippian subperiod an important phase of orogeny occurred in
the Appalachian Mountains.
About 60 million years ago the area that is now know as the Big Horn Mountains began to bow upward and the basins on either side began to sag downward. Millions of years of erosion have removed almost all the sediment rocks from the top of the Big Horns exposing the basement rocks. At the listed coordinates you can see the colorful layers of sedimentary rock still clothe the flanks of the Big Horns making this one of the most spectacular areas.
In order to claim this cache as a find you must do the following;
1. Take a picture of your group (NOT IN FRONT OF THE SIGN) with the formation in the background showing your GPS.
2. E-mail me what the year span is for this area covers.
3. Tell me the height and what the Madson "formation" is made of.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)