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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

Utah Geological Association

Abstract


Cenozoic Geology of Western Utah: Sites for Precious Metal and Hydrocarbon Accumulations, 1987
Pages 409-416

Tertiary Rocks of the Sevier Desert Millard County, Utah

James L. Baer, Lehi F. Hintze

Abstract

Tertiary rocks in western Utah were deposited in two fundamentally different kinds of paleoenvironments. Rocks younger than 15 million years accumulated as thick predominantly alluvial deposits in north-trending valleys developed by basin-and-range extension. Interbedded with the alluvium are playa lake beds, basalt flows, and some rhyolitic rocks. Rocks older than 15 million years were deposited on a topography that bears little resemblance to the present basin-range pattern. Drainage was probably mostly west to east and deposition was dominated by late Eocene to early Miocene volcanic rocks of intermediate composition which emanated from volcanic centers such as the East Tintic Mountains, Keg-Drum Mountains, and the Marysvale-Caliente volcanic belt. Locally, thin lacustrine and conglomerate deposits are interbedded with the volcanic rocks. Earliest Tertiary rocks are rare in western Utah. A few hundred feet of limestone and conglomerate in the Cricket Mountains has been judged to be Paleocene on the basis of fossil snails. There appears to be no basis for extending Eocene Green River-type deposition into the subsurface of western Utah valleys.


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