sandstone - yellow-brown medium-grained moderately lithified Miocene sandstone - hand/display specimen

This sandstone, from the Marple Canyon Sandstone member of the Ridge Route Formation, is Miocene in age, is moderately lithified, and was deposited in a deltaic to delta plain environment. The Ridge Basin is characterized by a variety of depositional environments. A closed or semi-closed basin during the Miocene and Pliocene, it exhibits shallow fresh-water lacustrine deposits such as lagoonal and shoreline deposits and bar complexes, as well as deep fresh-water turbidites and various types of sediment gravity flows. This sandstone was deposited in a delta or deltaic plain.

The field photo shows interbedded sandstone, shale and siltstone in an outcrop of the Ridge Route formation. Notice the sandstone is resistant to weathering and forms a prominent ledge. In arid areas, sandstones are cliff-formers. Below the yellow brown sandstone the shale forms a slope, with gray siltstone forming a number of small ledges below.

The sand grains in these specimens, when rubbed off onto a sheet of paper, will look like sand to a student. It would be instructive to compare this sandstone with one is larger or smaller grained, with one that is cemented with calcium carbonate, and with different colored sandstones, as sandstone has great variety and a student should not see only one example.

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