LOGGING REQUIREMENTS
For this EarthCache, you will be visiting the Wyoming State Capitol building. The first two layers of the building use sandstone from Fort Collins, Colorado. The rest was quarried from Rawlins, Wyoming. You will be comparing these two sandstones to answer the following questions.
In order to log this EarthCache, send me your answers to the following questions either through email or messaging from my profile page.
1: Compare the lower (Lyons) andstone to the upper (Tensleep) sandstone and describe the similarities or differences in the following categories:
A: Color
B: Grain size
2: Do you see any fossils in any of the sandstone?
3: Why do you think you see more fossils in one over the other?
4: Post a pic of you or a signature item with the building in the background.
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WHY HERE?
The Wyoming State Capitol Building is built from two different types of sandstone. These sandstones were quarried less than 150 miles apart but formed over 100 million years apart. Here you can compare and contrast them since they are right on top of each other.
WYOMING STATE CAPITOL BUILDING
The building is a three and one-half story structure, about 300 feet long by 83 to 112 feet wide exclusive of approaches. The height of both the center and wings from ground to roof is about 60 feet, although the distance from the grade of the building to the top of the spire on the dome is 146 feet. The basic material used in construction of the first two courses or platform of the building is sandstone quarried at Fort Collins, Colorado, and the superstructure is of gray sandstone from quarries at Rawlins, Wyoming.
SANDSTONE
Sandstone, a sedimentary rock, is formed when grains of sand are compacted and cemented together over thousands or millions of years. The sand grains often are composed of the minerals quartz or feldspar that were worn off other rocks and ground down into pebbles.
TENSLEEP FORMATION
The sandstone from Rawlins, Wyoming came from the Tensleep Formation.
Tensleep sandstone is composed of fine- to medium-grained sandstone, light gray and yellowish gray; generally slightly to moderately calcareous; some dolomite and sandy dolomite beds; mostly thick to massive sets of low-angle, wedge-planar crossbeds of dunes. Forms cliffs 61-91m (200-300 feet) thick. The Tensleep Formation formed between 308 and 298 million years ago.
LYONS FORMATION
The sandstone from Fort Collins, Colorado came from the Lyons Formation. The Lyons Sandstone of Leonardian age crops out along the east side of the Colorado Front Range. During the Permian, a broad sea intermittently covered an area of low relief, where sediments, including the Lyons, were deposited in environments ranging from fluvial to normal marine to hypersaline. The Lyons Sandstone formed as a nearshore deposit, showing evidence of both shore and eolian processes, and was deposited along a band between the emergent ancestral Rocky Mountains and the evaporite basins. The Lyons Formation formed between 541 and 252 million years ago.
references
https://gccc.beg.utexas.edu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/
https://www.cheyenne.org/
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