sandstone - yellow brown medium-grained Miocene sandstone from the Ridge Basin of California - teaching hand specimen

This sandstone is Miocene in age, is moderately lithified, was deposited in a closed basin in a non-marine or brackish marine depositional environment. It is mapped as the Ridge Route Formation, part of the Ridge Basin Group. The yellowish color is due to terrestrial deposition and subaerial oxidation.

When sand grains from these specimens are rubbed off onto a sheet of paper, the grains 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.

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.

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