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Vertebrate Paleontological Resources of Death Valley National Park, California

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Vertebrate Paleontological Resources of Death Valley National Park, California NEVADA STATE MUSEUM PALEONTOLOGICAL PAPERS NUMBER 1 Field Trip Guide Book 71st Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Paris Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada November 2-5, 2011 by Joshua W. Bonde and Andrew R.C. Milner, Editors NEVADA DEPARTMENT OF TOURISM AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS DIVISION OF MUSEUMS AND HISTORY CARSON CITY, NEVADA NOVEMBER 2011 CONFERENCE EDITION i VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES OF DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, CALIFORNIA Vincent L. Santucci1*, Torrey Nyborg2*, Paul H. Buchheim2, and Kevin E. Nick2 1 National Park Service, Geologic Resources Division, Washington, D.C. 20005 [email protected] 2 Department of Earth and Biological Sciences, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, California, 92354 [email protected] *Corresponding Authors 127 INTRODUCTION 1800 m (5905 feet) of basin fill fluvial to lacustrine Death Valley National Park (DEVA), sediments containing rich and diverse mammal and California, is administered by the National Park bird ichnofossils. The second stop will visit another Service and was originally proclaimed as a national vertebrate track locality of similar age and monument by President Hoover on February 11, depositional environment as the Copper Canyon 1933. The park boundary was expanded by Formation. The third and final stop of the field trip 1,200,000 acres and redesignated a national park on will examine a classic vertebrate collecting locality October 31, 1994 with the passage of the California in the Titus Canyon Formation which has yielded an Desert Protection Act. Death Valley National Park is assemblage of Eocene fossil mammals. the largest unit in the National Park System in the lower 48 states consisting of more than 3.6 million PHYSIOGRAPHY acres, much of which is designated wilderness. The Death Valley National Park lies in the park preserves a low-elevation desert ecosystem, extreme western portion of the Basin and Range almost completely surrounded by high mountain physiographic province and also exhibits some of ranges. As the lowest point in North America, the the most extreme topographic relief within this park has also been designated a Biosphere Reserve. province. The Basin and Range Province is one of The park includes Scotty’s Castle and the remnants the largest and most extensive provinces in the of gold and borax mining. United States. It extends from southeastern Oregon Death Valley National Park has a rich through Nevada and eastern California, southern paleontological record consisting of fossil plants, Arizona, and New Mexico into western Texas. The invertebrates, vertebrates, and trace fossils. The province is characterized by uplifted and tilted fault vertebrate paleontological resources documented blocks that form longitudinal, asymmetric mountain from Death Valley National Park consist of ranges separated by broad intervening valleys or conodonts, fish, birds, and mammals (both body basins. The overall structure of these mountain fossils and ichnofossils). Although this field guide is ranges and valleys is generally northwest-southeast. intended to focus on the vertebrate paleontology of The western boundary in southern California Death Valley National Park, other significant non- is the Sierra Nevada crest. The Garlock fault vertebrate fossils which are known to occur from separates the province from the Mojave province to within the park are discussed briefly in the the south (Norris and Webb 1976). In Death Valley paleontology section of this field guide. The field National Park the northwest-southeast trending trip to Death Valley National Park will include ranges include the Panamint, Saline, Last Chance, scheduled stops at three fossil vertebrate localities in Cottonwood, Grapevine, Funeral, Greenwater, the park. The first stop will examine the Copper Black, Amargosa, and Owlshead Mountains and part Canyon Formation which preserves approximately of the Inyo Range on the northwest boundary. The 128 intervening valleys include Death Valley, Webb 1976). The pattern of the late Proterozoic to Greenwater Valley, Amargosa Valley, Saline Valley, Cambrian sediments suggests that the depositional Eureka Valley and part of the Panamint Valley. environment was a well defined, north-northwest Relief within the park is dramatic, from the highest striking trough, tributary to the main Cordilleran point at Telescope Peak 3,368 m (11,049 feet) to the geosyncline. Large diabase sills were intruded into lowest point at Badwater -86 m (-282 feet). As with the lower portion of these geosynclinal sediments. much of the Basin and Range, drainage is internal. Diabase emplacement is thought to have been prior to lithification of the sediments, and probably before GEOLOGIC HISTORY deposition of the upper half of the Pahrump Group Nearly all major divisions of geologic time (Wright et al. 1953). Downwarping and deposition are represented in the rock record of this portion of in a shallow sea (less than 30 m (100 feet deep)) the Basin and Range Province. The summary below continued through the end of the Proterozoic. An is not intended to provide a comprehensive summary excellent exposure of Proterozoic - Cambrian strata for the complex geologic history of Death Valley, occurs within Death Valley National Park (Corsetti rather a very basic overview. and Hagadorn 2000). Proterozoic - The oldest rocks are lower Paleozoic Era - By the beginning of the Proterozoic (Archean) gneiss, schist and quartzite Paleozoic, subsidence had developed into a huge, probably all of sedimentary origin. Some units of north-northwest trending trough across western this metamorphic basement complex have been North America (the Cordilleran Geosyncline). The dated as 1.8 billion years old (Norris and Webb Cordilleran Geosyncline persisted through the 1976). Mafic to felsic granitic rocks were also Paleozoic and into the Mesozoic with several emplaced during the Archean Eon. Following transgressions and regressions of the shallow sea. emplacement of the basement complex, there was a The region accumulated large volumes of nearshore long interval of uplift. The surface of the region was and offshore marine sediments during this era with above sea level and deeply eroded. up to 7,000 m (23,000 feet) attributed to the In the late Proterozoic, downwarping Cambrian and Ordovician periods, and over 2,100 m resulted in the land surface of the region subsiding (7,000 feet) in the Silurian and Devonian (Nolan below sea level (Wright et al. 1953). A shallow sea 1943). By the end of the Devonian, uplift resulted in transgressed across the region and deposited up to only a few Carboniferous and Permian deposits. The 1,800 m (6,000 feet) of sediments. These shallow uplift persisted through the Permian into the marine sedimentary sequences of conglomerate, Mesozoic and eventually assisted in the sandstone, shale, limestone, and dolomite represent disappearance of the geosynclinal seas that had the earliest deposits of the Cordilleran geosyncline covered the region through much of the Paleozoic. and are known as the Pahrump Group (Norris and 129 Figure 1. Stratigraphic column for Death Valley National Park. 130 Mesozoic Era - A series of compressional saline, borate, and shallow lake deposits indicate an pulses affected the west coast between mid-Jurassic arid to semi-arid climate. These conditions have and Cretaceous time. Initiated by converging persisted through the late Neogene into Recent tectonic plates, this compression produced uplift of geologic time. the region and caused folding and faulting of both PALEONTOLOGY Proterozoic and Paleozoic strata. This episode of Death Valley National Park preserves an compressional mountain building is known as the extensive geologic record ranging from the Nevadan Orogeny. At the height of the Nevadan Proterozoic through the Holocene (Figure 1). Over Orogeny, the base of the geosynclinal sediments thirty fossiliferous stratigraphic units have been were transformed into molten rock and emplaced as identified in Death Valley National Park, containing batholiths. These igneous rocks are now unroofed fossil plants, invertebrates, vertebrates and trace and form the Sierra Nevada batholith and other fossils. Paleontological resources at the park have Mesozoic intrusives throughout the region (Clark been extensively studied for over 100 years and have 1960). generated hundreds of scientific publications related Cenozoic Era - The early Cenozoic to the park’s geology and paleontology (refer to (Paleocene, Eocene and Oligocene epochs) is review by Nyborg and Santucci 1999). The park present only as igneous intrusions and cemented museum collection provides a first glimpse into a stream gravels. During this time, the region was record of life from the Death Valley area extending probably above sea level, exhibited low relief, and back over a billion years. Death Valley fossils occur was eroded with little deposition. Crustal in museums throughout the United States and compression related to the Nevadan Orogeny and include a number of “type” specimens. associated with the Laramide Orogeny continued to The Proterozoic strata of Death Valley affect the region until the Eocene. By mid-Cenozoic, National Park are richly fossiliferous containing compressional forces had ceased and by the abundant algal fossils, stromatolites, microfossils, Miocene, extensional forces began to affect the acritarchs, and a few trace fossils. Horodyski (1993) region, probably caused by the North American and Hagadorn and Waggoner (2000) have reported continental plate overriding the Gulf
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