Geologists have long debated how and when the Colorado River made its first connection to the ocean. In a new study, a team led by the UO’s Becky Dorsey has helped pull the river’s story together.
The river did not, as many thought, simply roar down out of the Colorado Plateau and pour into the Gulf of California.
Geologists have long debated how and when the Colorado River made its first connection to the ocean. In a new study, a team led by the UO’s Becky Dorsey has helped pull the river’s story together.
The river did not, as many thought, simply roar down out of the Colorado Plateau and pour into the Gulf of California.
In a paper published in the journal Sedimentary Geology, Dorsey’s team proposes that lower stretches of river were influenced by shifts in underlying bedrock and changing sea levels. The river experienced a series of stops and starts between roughly 6.3 and 4.8 million years ago.
The clues emerged from examining layers of sediment exposed in rocks along the river, along with detective work to identify fossils found in the layering. Integrating that data opened a window on “the different processes that controlled the birth and early evolution of this iconic river system,” Dorsey said.
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Photo via University of Oregon.
