Paleozoic Correlations from Southern Rocky Mountain Front Range to Oklahoma-Texas Panhandles: ABSTRACT

Abstract

By means of measured sections and well logs tentative correlations are made from Colorado Springs to the Amarillo Arch. While these correlations are not absolute they are presented in the hope that they may be of use to geologists working in the areas or with the formations involved. The crinkly limestones of the Front Range are believed to represent a zone, rather than definite beds which may be followed continuously. This zone is believed to correlate, at least in part, with the Blaine gypsum, and San Andres and Kaibab limestones. The Lyons sandstone, the age of which has been a serious problem because of lack of fossils, is provisionally correlated with the Glorietta of New Mexico and the Duncan sandstone of the Panhandles. By means of well logs and cuttings the Ston Corrall anhydrite and dolomite is carried from the Texas Panhandle into Baca and Las Animas counties in Colorado. Its probable equivalent is shown in well logs to extend into the area between Pueblo and Colorado Springs, where its identity is lost in the upper part of the Fountain arkose. According to this interpretation the Fountain formation would range in age from Cherokee, or perhaps even pre-Pottsville, to Permian. Evidence presented tends to indicate that the Amarillo Mountains may have been uplifted beginning in early Pennsylvanian time and continuing until late Pennsylvania time and that the Marmaton was a period during which great sheets of arkose were deposited in widely scattered areas in central Kansas, along the ancestral Rocky Mountains in Colorado and northeastern New Mex co, and along the flanks of the Amarillo Mountains in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles, their distribution being controlled by streams rather than offshore currents. The arkoses of the Oklahoma Panhandle may be the attenuate edges of the arkose sheets of the Texas Panhandle or they may have had a more proximate source. End_of_Article - Last_Page 939------------