Bare Mountain, Geologic Time In Panorama

Bare Mountain is one of the more unnoticed but astonishing and puzzling geologic features of the American West. Located south of Beatty, Nevada and... more

by Douglas Taylor

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Price

$395

Dimensions

90.000 x 30.000 inches

Title

Bare Mountain, Geologic Time In Panorama

Artist

Douglas Taylor

Medium

Photograph - Fine Art Digital Photography

Description

Bare Mountain is one of the more unnoticed but astonishing and puzzling geologic features of the American West. Located south of Beatty, Nevada and in southern Nye County, this small mountain range is lit by the late afternoon spring sun which illuminates the fabulous geologic history it represents in the Great Basin Desert.

What makes this mountain range so remarkable is that the layers revealed in its flanks are not horizontal as they would have been laid down originally, but are now all almost vertical. Bare Mountain is a small range, just about nine miles long and reaching 6,273 feet, 3,000 above the desert valley floor. Like most of the other Basin and Range mountains it trends southeast to northwest. It has been extensively folded and complexly faulted over a vast period of time.

Each layer represents a different depositional time and circumstance, starting at approximately 1.5 billion years ago on the far right with quartzite (metamorphosed sandstone) deposits. From there the layers become increasingly younger, and feature more quartzite, then some carbonates such as dolomite. All the geologic time periods from the Pre-Cambrian through Mississippian are represented by marine limestone and dolomite, but then a vast gap of almost 300 million years goes unrepresented in the rocks with the exception of an undeformed granite instrusion dated to 125 million years ago.

The more recent deposits are mostly all volcanic in origin, ranging from rhyolite and many ashfall tuffs to basaltic lavas, though there are occasional sand and siltstone beds interspersed among these volcanic layers which range in age of between 25 to 7 millions years old.

But then, somehow these layers measuring miles in thickness have all been incredibly turned on their side and thrust upwards to form this magical record of geologic history as a single mountain. It is not the only mountain in southern Nevada exhibiting this astonishing structure, but was certainly the most notable as the sun broke through the clouds to shine its light on this story.

This true panoramic view is formatted to the traditional 1:3 ratio for when a wide, colorful, unique and dramatic nature scene is desired to fulfill a demanding design requirement. It can be obtained in widths up to 9 feet in length with astonishing clarity.

Uploaded

December 18th, 2021