Set a time machine to around 275 million years ago and the Guadalupe Mountains would look like another man . or else of dust-covered towers of desert rock candy , you ’d see an underwater Rand bustle about with alien - comparable beast .
TheGuadalupe Mountainsare a stove of mountains located in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico , strive 2,667 meters ( 8,751 feet ) above sea level today . Todaybeing the cardinal Book .
During the Permian period – a geological era that endure from about 299 to 252 million years ago – this zoom desert landscape was anything but arid . Back then , it lie along the westerly boundary of thesupercontinentPangea . This exceptional surface area , now known as the Permian Basin , was inundate by an inland sea connected to the gigantic surrounding sea by a narrow duct .
The many geological layers of El Capitan in Texas shows its deep history.Image credit:Carpenter, Kenneth/Wikimedia Commons(CC BY-SA 4.0)
This chronicle fare to life-time most vividly in Texas ’s Capitan Formation , widely regard as one of the good - uphold Permian fogey reef in the world . Here in the Chihuahuan Desert , a vast and unshakable slope leads up to El Capitan , arguably one of the most iconic height in the Guadalupe Mountains , stand 2,464 meters ( 8,085 feet ) above sea level today .
Thefossils in the formationshow it was primarily built of sponges and alga , as fight down to the corals that imprint most modern reef . The sprawling reef provided a household to a multifariousness of marine creatures , includingammonites , crinoids , snails , nautiloids , pelecypod , brachiopods , and trilobites .
It did n’t stick around evermore , obviously . Around 252 million years ago , the end of the Permian ushered inEarth ’s most annihilating extinction outcome , known as the " Great Dying . " In this cataclysmic upheaval , more than 95 percent of marine metal money and 70 percent of land species were pass over from existence . While the exact drive remains ill-defined , massive volcanic bang or a colossal asteroid wallop are the result suspect . Either way , something withering caused ruinous changes to the surroundings , create conditions that put the bulk of life on the planet into a chokehold .
A satellite image of the border of Texas and New Mexico showing the Guadalupe Mountains and El Capitan.Image credit: Landsat 9/USGS/NASA Earth Observatory image by Wanmei Liang
The Permian Basin was n’t spar . After the wave of last and destruction , the once - prosper Capitan Reef was buried beneath chiliad of fundament of sediment , seal it off for tens of millions of years . Over the next 20 million years , tectonic forces gradually press this ancient reef upward , lifting it well-nigh 3,000 meters ( 10,000 pes ) . As time pass , the superimposed layers were eroded away by wind and pelting , in conclusion exposing the Witwatersrand to the world once again .
All of this might seem very distant from the 21st century – but it is n’t as abstract and irrelevant as you might think .
The Permian Basin is now thelargest petroleum - producing region in the US , and it owes this to the ancient nautical animation that once thrived here . For millions of years , the stiff of microscopic algae , plankton , and other tiny being were immerse beneath layer of sediment . Under Brobdingnagian heat and pressure sensation , this organic issue was transformed into the vast oil stockpile that power much of our New world today . The energy these lifeforms “ sucked up ” from the Sun eons ago continues to fuel industry , homes , and your car , creating a knock-down link between us and a aloof past .
[ H / T : NASA Earth Observatory ]
