Ripples in time
Imagine standing at the edge of a lake that once covered this area. Light sparkles off shimmering water, and shorebirds skitter though the shallows. Small waves gently lap at the shore, forming ripples in the loose sand. Amazing! It was so much different than Death Valley today!
Examine the surfaces of the tilted rock layers in the canyon walls. Do you observe the undulating pattern? These ripple marks formed at the lakeshore about five million years ago. Preservation of their delicate pattern required rapid burial beneath another layer of sediment. In other places in Death Valley, fascinating fossil footprints of large mammals are exposed in such lake deposits.
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| GLOSSARY | > canyon, fossil, landscape, mammal, rock, sand, sediments, , , |
GOLDEN CANYON GEOLOGY TRAIL
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Ancient shoreline