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Except where underlain by the Sixtymile Formation, the Tapeats Sandstone is the Cambrian geologic formation that is the basal geologic unit of the Tonto Group.Typically, it is also the basal geologic formation of the Phanerozoic strata exposed in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, and parts of northern Arizona, central Arizona, southeast California, southern Nevada, and southeast Utah.
At the base of this sequence, the Great Unconformity, with the Tapeats Sandstone of the Tonto Group overlying the Vishnu Basement Rocks, is well exposed in a manner that is atypical and scientifically significant in its combination of extent and accessibility. This exposure is frequently illustrated in popular and educational publications, and ...
In the Grand Canyon, the Tapeats Sandstone is a medium- to coarse-grained, thin-bedded, cliff-forming conglomeratic sandstone that weathers to a tan or reddish-brown. Its thickness varies from very thin or absent where deposited over prominent paleotopographic highs, as much as to 90 m (300 ft) high.
He renamed the Tonto sandstone as the Tapeats Sandstone and the Tonto shale as the Bright Angel Shale. He named the Bright Angel Shale after Bright Angel Canyon because in the walls of this canyon, this formation is well exposed. [3] Later in 1922, [6] the Marbled limestone was redefined and renamed as the Muav Limestone by L. F. Noble.
Tapeats Sandstone averages 525 million years old and is made of medium- to coarse-grained sand and conglomerate that was deposited on an ancient shore (see 3a in figure 1). [11] Ripple marks are common in the upper members of this dark brown thin-bedded layer. Fossils and imprint trails of trilobites and brachiopods have also been found in the ...
About 525 million years ago, when northern Arizona was at the bottom of a shallow sea, a thin layer of sediment called the Tapeats Sandstone was deposited over the Cleopatra tuff. Limestones and other sediments accumulated above the sandstone until about 70 million years ago when the Laramide Orogeny created new mountains and new faults in the ...
The Sixtymile Formation is a very thin accumulation of sandstone, siltstone, and breccia underlying the Tapeats Sandstone that is exposed in only four places in the Chuar Valley. These exposures occur atop Nankoweap Butte and within Awatubi and Sixtymile Canyons in the eastern Grand Canyon, Arizona.
The three units of the Tonto Group are Muav Limestone, upon Bright Angle Shale, upon Tapeats Sandstone. The Tapeats is a thin cliff-former unit found along Granite Gorge and its side canyons forming a flat surface in locales not dramatically affected by faulting, up-warping (domes), or down-warping.