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

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.

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.

Select a specimen: If there is more than one specimen shown, you can select a particular specimen by telling us what is in the photo with it, a black and silver pen, a black mechanical pencil, or one of those plus some number of coins, or you can let us make the selection.

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