Reconstructing Rivers: Interpreting the Cretaceous Paleo-environment of the Cedar Mountain Formation, Utah - REU Site

Gustavus Adolphus College, Saint Peter MN

Investigators

Abstract

This eight-week project, to be hosted by Gustavus Adolphus College, will provide participants with an exceptional opportunity to contribute to timely research in Sedimentary Geology. Eight undergraduate students, two student Teaching Assistants, and the PI will investigate, through field research, the sedimentary history of fossil-bearing Lower Cretaceous strata of the Cedar Mountain Formation (CMF) in northeast and east central Utah. In order to gain a better understanding of the processes of distribution and deposition of the CMF, participants will design and develop experiments in fluvial sedimentology at the University of Minnesota's Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory. Recent discoveries of dinosaur fossil localities in the CMF have led paleontologists to recognize that large sauropods, previously thought to be extinct in North America in mid-Cretaceious time, were still extant. Currently, five academic and governmental research groups have fossil excavations and geochronologic study underway. Yet sedimentologic analysis, especially facies interpretation to characterize dinosaur habitats and fluvial processes, is relatively undeveloped in the CMF. The proposed project will build on the PI's four-year history of student-centered research in and around Dinosaur Naitonal Monument, which has included an REU project during summer 2002. During summer 2003, the project will be geographically expanded to include CMF outcrops in east central Utah and in Arches National Monument. This research project will progressively develop students' research skills toward an understanding and environmental interpretation of the CMF. The results of this project will be highly significant to North American paleontologists, and will thus provide student participants with an immediate sense of the relevance of their research. Throughout the program, the PI and visiting scientists will develop students' thinking about observation, interpretation, and experimentation. As in the past, the PI will recruit with the explicit goal of achieving diversity in gender, geographic distribution, and minority status of participants.