Lower Cretaceous strata exposed in the foreland basin of central Utah were divided into two lithostratigraphic units, the Cedar Mountain and San Pitch Formations. Together these formations correlate with both the Cedar Mountain Formation exposed on the San Rafael Swell and the lower part of the Canyon Range Conglomerate exposed in the Canyon Mountains.

"In this well-illustrated book, Hildebrand expands upon his model for the development of the North American Cordillera detailed in Special paper 457. Starting with an overview of Cordilleran geology he goes on to provide an in depth look at how the Rubian ribbon continent was assembled. He integrates the complex geology of the Cordillera into an actualistic model involving arc magmatism, arc-continent collision, slab failure magmatism, and transcurrent motion in both Rubia and the western North American margin. While much of the focus is on the assembly of the Rubian ribbon continent, Hildebrand explores its interactions with North America during the Sevier and Laramide events and concludes that North America was the lower plate in both"--Provided by publisher.

The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is the location of one of the best-known terrestrial records for the late Cretaceous. Prior fieldwork confirmed the richness of the area, but a major effort begun in the new century has documented over 2,000 new vertebrate fossil sites, provided new radiometric dates, and identified five new genera of ceratopsids, two new species of hadrosaur, a probable new genus of hypsilophodontid, new pachycephalosaurs and ankylosaurs, several kinds of theropods (including a new genus of oviraptor and a new tyrannosaur), plus the most complete specimen of a Late Cretaceous therizinosaur ever collected from North America, and much more. The research documented in this book is rewriting our understanding of Late Cretaceous paleobiogeography and dinosaur phyletics. At the Top of the Grand Staircase: The Late Cretaceous of Southern Utah is a major stepping stone toward a total synthesis of the ecology and evolution of the Late Cretaceous ecosystems of western North America.

This 20 page report describes the stratigraphy of the Cedar Mountain and Dakota formations in and around Dinosaur National Monument in northeast Utah and includes new palynology and radiometric age data. The contract between these formations is unconformable in which the Dakota formation has incised into the underlying Cedar Mountain formation. Locally, the Dakota includes a basal marine mudstone and shale unit that contains late Albian dinoflagellate cysts, which represents peak sea level during the Kiowa-Skull Creek depositional cycle and indicates the first marine incursion of the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway into Utah.

This volume emphasizes the interaction of the Cordilleran thrust belt and Rocky Mountain foreland in studies of regional structural geology, geophysics, and sedimentology from west-central Montana to Arizona. The volume outlines how the nature of the Rocky mountain foreland and its deformation affect the geometry of the Cordilleran thrust belt. Many of the structural and geophysical studies reported in this volume also address the question of which structures - forland or thrust belt - developed first in a specific region and how early formed structures influenced later ones. Several chapters address the nature and style of foreland development.

Accompanying CD-ROM contains ... papers in this volume (in color) as pdf files."--Page v.