Colorado Plateau coring set for Petrified Forest

The Colorado Plateau Coring Project has chosen the Triassic section (Moenkopi and Chinle) at Petrified Forest National Park as the initial target for coring, that could begin this Fall.     The goal is "testing of competing climatic, biotic, and tectonic models for the evolution of western Pangea."   [right, supplmentary material to EOS report]

In a short report in EOS from a workshop held in New Mexico last year, John Geissman et al, wrote that "The Petrified Forest core, about 460 meters in length and HQ gauge (~6.4 centimeters in diameter), will provide a robust reference section where geochronologic, magnetostratigraphic, environmental, and paleontologic information can be registered..."

When complete, the core will be archived at the Rutgers University Core Repository.