The goals of this home page are to provide the following:
Information on my new book, ANCIENT LANDSCAPES OF THE COLORADO PLATEAU by Ron Blakey and Wayne Ranney. Click here for information about this book: merchant
The Colorado Plateau is one of the World's great show places for sedimentary rocks. Precambrian and all Phanerozoic periods except Ordovician and Silurian are represented. Especially well exposed are Permian through Jurassic sedimentary rocks that were deposited in mostly tropical desert sedimentary environments. These sedimentary rocks provide the focal point for the greatest concentration of National Parks in the World. The Grand Staircase, the southwestern escarpment of the Colorado Plateau, exposes one of the finest and most complete sedimentary sections anywhere!
Studies on the Plateau involve numerous NAU Geology faculty and their students. Hundreds of publications and dozens of MS theses have resulted from these studies.
A list, by stratigraphic age, of NAU MS Theses that deal with Sedimentary Geology
Although the design and navigation of this web site is new as of August, 2009, most of the material from my old site is here; and several pages are new, including detailed maps of Colorado Plateau Paleogeography. Navigation is simplified and the web site is now divided into six parts, seen readily at the top and bottom of this page; a brief summary of each part follows:
This page was last updated June, 2010, by:
Ron Blakey (ronald.blakey@nau.edu)
Department of Geology, Box 4099
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
phone: (928) 523-2740
fax: (928) 523-9220
The paleogeographic maps on this site are representative of my many years of constructing these maps. They are made by plotting data and interpretations from the geologic literature and then painting the maps to look like satellite views of Earth's past. Thousands of publications were used in constructing these maps and a few key references are given in the various paleogeographic sections. The ages in millions (Ma) and Billions (Ga) of years ago and their correlation to the names on the geologic timescale are from the 2004 Timescale (Gradstein, et al.).
All maps are copyright to me, Ron Blakey, and may bu used, with citation to Ron Blakey, NAU Geology, for educational, non-profit, non-commercial purposes. For commercial uses, please contact me.
DVD's of all maps in Global, North American, Colorado Plateau, and Western North American series are available for non-comercial use
A Few Links I Use Frequently