Vicky VeritasTitus Canyon, Death Valley
Titus Canyon is a narrow, winding, one-way, 4-wheel drive road that cuts through the Grapevine Mountains of Death Valley starting in Nevada off of Highway 194, and coming out in Death Valley, California. See the map at the link below. Note: the Titus Canyon road and parking lot at west end are currently closed. Check the park web site before you go: https://www.nps.gov/deva/planyourvisit/conditions.htm
Most of the rocks that make up the range are over half a billion years old - a very thick sequence of limestone/carbonate rocks formed at the edge of a warm tropical sea - the Bonanza King formation. Later, the sea regressed and the rocks were subjected to compressional forces with the formation of a subduction zone at the margin of California over 200 million years ago. The rocks were uplifted, faulted, folded, and in certain parts turned upside down. See the folds in the aerial below.
Another cool part of Titus Canyon is the famous Megabreccia. A breccia is a sedimentary rock composed of angular fragments of rock cemented in a fine-grained matrix. The picture is below. Geologist Shawn Willsey does a great job of showing these fantastic features in the quick video below.
The wild and bizarre rocks of Titus Canyon in Death Valley explained by a geologist: https://youtu.be/Om4sSy96dA0
Refer to the map here: http://digital-desert.com/death-valley/geology/titus-canyon.html#google_vignette
#DeathValley #TitusCanyon #Anticline #RecumbantFold #BonanzaKingFormation #geology #Science
