RE: Ain't No Mountain Low Enough [elephants don't like steep terrain]

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Ian Paulsen
>
>
> HI:
>  What about the Burgess Shales in British Columbia, Canada?

Ummm... I ******really****** hope this is a joke...

There is a world of difference between stuff being deposited and preserved IN a 
mountainous region (damned difficult) vs. stuff
being deposited in terrestrial or marine settings and subsequently uplifted 
long after it was lithified (damend easy). The Burgess
Shale is an example of the latter: it was deposited in a relatively deep water 
environment, and has only much more recently been
lifted up into the mountains.

So dead animals buried in mud -> fossils in sedimentary rock -> uplift into 
moutnains.

On the other hand, the Pleistocene material in mountains is stuff getting 
deposited in caves, cracks, and crevices. In this case,
the rocks of the mountain itself may be chalk... er, chockful of fossils, but 
those would be far older than the Pleistocene material
deposited on them.

So in that case mountains -> dead animals buried in mud -> fossils in 
(typically unlithified) sediments.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
        Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
        Mailing Address:
                Building 237, Room 1117
                College Park, MD  20742

http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796