Grand Canyon Geology 

This lesson on sedimentary rocks explores the Grand Canyon in Arizona. This geological formation is rich in beauty and geological history giving us an insight on how this land looked hundreds of millions of years ago. For this lesson I used the book Grand Canyon Geology by L. Greer Price, the Waldorf curriculum for grade 6 by Live Education and a documentary that can be found on RU-vid. I researched the origins of the Grand Canyon back when the continent of North America was not yet even part of pangaea when the planet was covered with mostly ocean and there was hardly any oxygen in the atmosphere. The lowest layers of the Grand Canyon are the metamorphic and granite layers which date back to precambrian times. Each subsequent layer tells a story of what the Colorado Plateau looked like over the course of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. During times of ocean transgression, water covered this area in varying degrees of coastal turbulence or wetlands and estuaries. This was during a time when the west coast of the North American continent was a passive margin, wet and warm and situated near the equator in the middle of present day Atlantic Ocean. Over geological time, the passive margin turned into an active margin with subduction and a volcanic island arc. During this time, the mid-Atlantic ridge was tearing and filling with magma creating one of the longest largest mountains ranges as the continents moved into their present day locations. Once the sediment of those shallow seas build up and became compacted, tectonic activity raised the whole plateau to a mountain range as tall as the Himalayas. This tremendous mountain range then eroded away before water carved the stone cliffs to expose the stunning Grand Canyon.
You can find the complete list of materials we used for this unit, including pictures, links and descriptions of each book or kit, videos, resources and more at the blog post that accompanies this video:
www.pepperandpine.com/mineral...
Check out the Mineralogy, Earth Science and Geology playlist for projects, resources and more!
• Geology, Mineralogy an...
Grand Canyon geology by the History channel
 • The Grand Canyon Expla...
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