California
California is a state in the Pacific Region of the United States. With 39.6 million residents, California is the most populous U. S. the third-largest by area. The state capital is Sacramento; the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second and fifth most populous urban regions, with 18.7 million and 9.7 million residents respectively. Los Angeles is California's most populous city, the country's second most populous, after New York City. California has the nation's most populous county, Los Angeles County, its largest county by area, San Bernardino County; the City and County of San Francisco is both the country's second-most densely populated major city after New York City and the fifth-most densely populated county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. California's $3.0 trillion economy is larger than that of any other state, larger than those of Texas and Florida combined, the largest sub-national economy in the world. If it were a country, California would be the 5th largest economy in the world, the 36th most populous as of 2017.
The Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nation's second- and third-largest urban economies, after the New York metropolitan area. The San Francisco Bay Area PSA had the nation's highest GDP per capita in 2017 among large PSAs, is home to three of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization and four of the world's ten richest people. California is considered a global trendsetter in popular culture, innovation and politics, it is considered the origin of the American film industry, the hippie counterculture, fast food, the Internet, the personal computer, among others. The San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles Area are seen as global centers of the technology and entertainment industries, respectively. California has a diverse economy: 58% of the state's economy is centered on finance, real estate services and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5% of the state's economy, California's agriculture industry has the highest output of any U.
S. state. California is bordered by Oregon to the north and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; the state's diverse geography ranges from the Pacific Coast in the west to the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the east, from the redwood–Douglas fir forests in the northwest to the Mojave Desert in the southeast. The Central Valley, a major agricultural area, dominates the state's center. Although California is well-known for its warm Mediterranean climate, the large size of the state results in climates that vary from moist temperate rainforest in the north to arid desert in the interior, as well as snowy alpine in the mountains. Over time and wildfires have become more pervasive features. What is now California was first settled by various Native Californian tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries; the Spanish Empire claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its successful war for independence but was ceded to the United States in 1848 after the Mexican–American War.
The western portion of Alta California was organized and admitted as the 31st state on September 9, 1850. The California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom; the word California referred to the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico. The name derived from the mythical island California in the fictional story of Queen Calafia, as recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo; this work was the fifth in a popular Spanish chivalric romance series that began with Amadis de Gaula. Queen Calafia's kingdom was said to be a remote land rich in gold and pearls, inhabited by beautiful black women who wore gold armor and lived like Amazons, as well as griffins and other strange beasts. In the fictional paradise, the ruler Queen Calafia fought alongside Muslims and her name may have been chosen to echo the title of a Muslim leader, the Caliph. It's possible.
Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, inhabited by black women without a single man among them, they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with great virtue; the island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the craggy rocks. Shortened forms of the state's name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. Various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000; the Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups were diverse in their political organization with bands, villages, on the resource-rich coasts, large chiefdoms, such as the Chumash and Salinan.
Trade, intermarriage a
Canyon
A canyon or gorge is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosive activity of a river over geologic timescales. Rivers have a natural tendency to cut through underlying surfaces wearing away rock layers as sediments are removed downstream. A river bed will reach a baseline elevation, the same elevation as the body of water into which the river drains; the processes of weathering and erosion will form canyons when the river's headwaters and estuary are at different elevations through regions where softer rock layers are intermingled with harder layers more resistant to weathering. A canyon may refer to a rift between two mountain peaks, such as those in ranges including the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the Himalayas or the Andes. A river or stream and erosion carve out such splits between mountains. Examples of mountain-type canyons are Provo Canyon in Utah or Yosemite Valley in California's Sierra Nevada. Canyons within mountains, or gorges that have an opening on only one side, are called box canyons.
Slot canyons are narrow canyons that have smooth walls. Steep-sided valleys in the seabed of the continental slope are referred to as submarine canyons. Unlike canyons on land, submarine canyons are thought to be formed by turbidity currents and landslides; the word canyon is Spanish in origin, with the same meaning. The word canyon is used in North America while the words gorge and ravine are used in Europe and Oceania, though gorge and ravine are used in some parts of North America. In the United States, place names use canyon in the southwest and gorge in the northeast, with the rest of the country graduating between these two according to geography. In Canada, a gorge is narrow while a ravine is more open and wooded; the military-derived word defile is used in the United Kingdom. Most canyons were formed by a process of long-time erosion from table-land level; the cliffs form because harder rock strata that are resistant to erosion and weathering remain exposed on the valley walls. Canyons are much more common in arid than in wet areas because physical weathering has a more localized effect in arid zones.
The wind and water from the river combine to erode and cut away less resistant materials such as shales. The freezing and expansion of water serves to help form canyons. Water seeps into cracks between the rocks and freezes, pushing the rocks apart and causing large chunks to break off the canyon walls, in a process known as frost wedging. Canyon walls are formed of resistant sandstones or granite. Sometimes large rivers run through canyons as the result of gradual geological uplift; these are called entrenched rivers, because they are unable to alter their course. In the United States, the Colorado River in the Southwest and the Snake River in the Northwest are two examples of tectonic uplift. Canyons form in areas of limestone rock; as limestone is soluble to a certain extent, cave systems form in the rock. When these collapse, a canyon is left, as in the Mendip Hills in Somerset and Yorkshire Dales in Yorkshire, England. A box canyon is a small canyon, shorter and narrower than a river canyon, with steep walls on three sides, allowing access and egress only through the mouth of the canyon.
Box canyons were used in the western United States as convenient corrals, with their entrances fenced. The definition of "largest canyon" is imprecise, because a canyon can be large by its depth, its length, or the total area of the canyon system; the inaccessibility of the major canyons in the Himalaya contributes to their not being regarded as candidates for the biggest canyon. The definition of "deepest canyon" is imprecise if one includes mountain canyons as well as canyons cut through flat plateaus; the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon, along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet, is regarded by some as the deepest canyon in the world at 5,500 m. It is longer than the Grand Canyon in the United States. Others consider the Kali Gandaki Gorge in midwest Nepal to be the deepest canyon, with a 6400 m difference between the level of the river and the peaks surrounding it. Vying for deepest canyon in the Americas are the Cotahuasi Canyon and Colca Canyon, in southern Peru. Both have been measured at over 3500 m deep.
The Grand Canyon of northern Arizona in the United States, with an average depth of 1,600 m and a volume of 4.17 trillion cubic metres, is one of the world's largest canyons. It was among the 28 finalists of the New7Wonders of Nature worldwide poll; the largest canyon in Africa is the Fish River Canyon in Namibia. In August 2013, the discovery of Greenland's Grand Canyon was reported, based on the analysis of data from Operation IceBridge, it is located under an ice sheet. At 750 kilometres long, it is believed to be the longest canyon in the world; the Capertee Valley in Australia is reported as being the second largest canyon in the world. Some canyons have notable cultural significance. Evidence of early humanoids has been discovered in Africa's Olduvai Gorge. In the southwestern United States, canyons are important archeologically because of the many cliff-dwellings built in such areas by the ancient Pueblo people who were their first inhabitants; the following list contains only the most notable canyons of the world, arranged by continent and country.
Fish River Canyon Blyde Riv
Granite
Granite is a common type of felsic intrusive igneous rock, granular and phaneritic in texture. Granites can be predominantly white, pink, or gray depending on their mineralogy; the word "granite" comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to the coarse-grained structure of such a holocrystalline rock. Speaking, granite is an igneous rock with between 20% and 60% quartz by volume, at least 35% of the total feldspar consisting of alkali feldspar, although the term "granite" is used to refer to a wider range of coarse-grained igneous rocks containing quartz and feldspar; the term "granitic" means granite-like and is applied to granite and a group of intrusive igneous rocks with similar textures and slight variations in composition and origin. These rocks consist of feldspar, quartz and amphibole minerals, which form an interlocking, somewhat equigranular matrix of feldspar and quartz with scattered darker biotite mica and amphibole peppering the lighter color minerals; some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic.
A granitic rock with a porphyritic texture is known as a granite porphyry. Granitoid is a descriptive field term for lighter-colored, coarse-grained igneous rocks. Petrographic examination is required for identification of specific types of granitoids; the extrusive igneous rock equivalent of granite is rhyolite. Granite is nearly always massive and tough; these properties have made granite a widespread construction stone throughout human history. The average density of granite is between 2.65 and 2.75 g/cm3, its compressive strength lies above 200 MPa, its viscosity near STP is 3–6·1019 Pa·s. The melting temperature of dry granite at ambient pressure is 1215–1260 °C. Granite has poor primary permeability overall, but strong secondary permeability through cracks and fractures if they are present. Granite is classified according to the QAPF diagram for coarse grained plutonic rocks and is named according to the percentage of quartz, alkali feldspar and plagioclase feldspar on the A-Q-P half of the diagram.
True granite contains both alkali feldspars. When a granitoid is devoid or nearly devoid of plagioclase, the rock is referred to as alkali feldspar granite; when a granitoid contains less than 10% orthoclase, it is called tonalite. A granite containing both muscovite and biotite micas is called two-mica granite. Two-mica granites are high in potassium and low in plagioclase, are S-type granites or A-type granites. A worldwide average of the chemical composition of granite, by weight percent, based on 2485 analyses: Granite containing rock is distributed throughout the continental crust. Much of it was intruded during the Precambrian age. Outcrops of granite tend to form rounded massifs. Granites sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills, formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels. Granite occurs as small, less than 100 km2 stock masses and in batholiths that are associated with orogenic mountain ranges. Small dikes of granitic composition called aplites are associated with the margins of granitic intrusions.
In some locations coarse-grained pegmatite masses occur with granite. Granite is more common in continental crust than in oceanic crust, they are crystallized from felsic melts which are less dense than mafic rocks and thus tend to ascend toward the surface. In contrast, mafic rocks, either basalts or gabbros, once metamorphosed at eclogite facies, tend to sink into the mantle beneath the Moho. Granitoids have crystallized from felsic magmas that have compositions near a eutectic point. Magmas are composed of minerals in variable abundances. Traditionally, magmatic minerals are crystallized from the melts that have separated from their parental rocks and thus are evolved because of igneous differentiation. If a granite has a cooling process, it has the potential to form larger crystals. There are peritectic and residual minerals in granitic magmas. Peritectic minerals are generated through peritectic reactions, whereas residual minerals are inherited from parental rocks. In either case, magmas will evolve to the eutectic for crystallization upon cooling.
Anatectic melts are produced by peritectic reactions, but they are much less evolved than magmatic melts because they have not separated from their parental rocks. The composition of anatectic melts may change toward the magmatic melts through high-degree fractional crystallization. Fractional crystallisation serves to reduce a melt in iron, titanium and sodium, enrich the melt in potassium and silicon – alkali feldspar and quartz, are two of the defining constituents of granite; this process operates regardless of the origin of parental magmas to granites, regardless of their chemistry. The composition and origin of any magma that differentiates into granite leave certain petrological evidence as to what the granite's parental rock was; the final texture and composition of a granite are distinctive as to its parental rock. For instance, a granite, derived from partial melting of meta
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. It is the longest of the Phanerozoic eras, lasting from 541 to 251.902 million years ago, is subdivided into six geologic periods: the Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian and Permian. The Paleozoic comes after the Neoproterozoic Era of the Proterozoic Eon and is followed by the Mesozoic Era; the Paleozoic was a time of dramatic geological and evolutionary change. The Cambrian witnessed the most rapid and widespread diversification of life in Earth's history, known as the Cambrian explosion, in which most modern phyla first appeared. Arthropods, fish, amphibians and diapsids all evolved during the Paleozoic. Life began in the ocean but transitioned onto land, by the late Paleozoic, it was dominated by various forms of organisms. Great forests of primitive plants covered the continents, many of which formed the coal beds of Europe and eastern North America. Towards the end of the era, sophisticated diapsids and synapsids were dominant and the first modern plants appeared.
The Paleozoic Era ended with the largest extinction event in the history of Earth, the Permian–Triassic extinction event. The effects of this catastrophe were so devastating that it took life on land 30 million years into the Mesozoic Era to recover. Recovery of life in the sea may have been much faster; the Paleozoic era began and ended with supercontinents and in between were the rise of mountains along the continental margins, flooding and draining of shallow seas between the mountain ranges, in the interior of the continents. At its start, the supercontinent Pannotia broke up. Paleoclimatic studies and evidence of glaciers indicate that central Africa was most in the polar regions during the early Paleozoic. During the early Paleozoic, the huge continent Gondwana was forming. By mid-Paleozoic, the collision of North America and Europe produced the Acadian-Caledonian uplifts, a subduction plate uplifted eastern Australia. By the late Paleozoic, continental collisions formed the supercontinent of Pangaea and resulted in some of the great mountain chains, including the Appalachians, Ural Mountains, mountains of Tasmania.
There are six periods in the Paleozoic Era: Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian and the Permian. The Cambrian spans from 541 million years to 485 million years and is the first period of the Paleozoic era of the Phanerozoic; the Cambrian marked a boom in evolution in an event known as the Cambrian explosion in which the largest number of creatures evolved in any single period of the history of the Earth. Creatures like algae evolved, but the most ubiquitous of that period were the armored arthropods, like trilobites. All marine phyla evolved in this period. During this time, the supercontinent Pannotia begins to break up, most of which became the supercontinent Gondwana; the Ordovician spanned from 485 million years to 443 million years ago. The Ordovician was a time in Earth's history in which many of the biological classes still prevalent today evolved, such as primitive fish and coral; the most common forms of life, were trilobites and shellfish. More the first arthropods went ashore to colonize the empty continent of Gondwana.
By the end of the Ordovician, Gondwana was at the south pole, early North America had collided with Europe, closing the Atlantic Ocean. Glaciation of Africa resulted in a major drop in sea level, killing off all life that had established along coastal Gondwana. Glaciation may have caused the Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, in which 60% of marine invertebrates and 25% of families became extinct, is considered the first mass extinction event and the second deadliest; the Silurian spanned from 443 to 416 million years ago. The Silurian saw the rejuvenation of life; this period saw the mass evolution of fish, as jawless fish became more numerous, jawed fish evolved, the first freshwater fish evolved, though arthropods, such as sea scorpions, were still apex predators. Terrestrial life evolved, including early arachnids and centipedes; the evolution of vascular plants allowed plants to gain a foothold on land. These early plants were the forerunners of all plant life on land. During this time, there were four continents: Gondwana, Laurentia and Avalonia.
The recent rise in sea levels allowed many new species to thrive in water. The Devonian spanned from 416 million years to 359 million years ago. Known as "The Age of the Fish", the Devonian featured a huge diversification of fish, including armored fish like Dunkleosteus and lobe-finned fish which evolved into the first tetrapods. On land, plant groups diversified in an event known as the Devonian Explosion when plants made lignin allowing taller growth and vascular tissue: the first trees evolved, as well as seeds; this event diversified arthropod life, by providing them new habitats. The first amphibians evolved, the fish were now at the top of the food chain. Near the end of the Devonian, 70% of all species became extinct in an event known as the Late Devonian extinction, the Earth's second mass extinction event; the Carboniferous spanned from 359 million to 299 million years ago. During this time, average global temperatures were exc
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic, spanning 60 million years from the end of the Silurian, 419.2 million years ago, to the beginning of the Carboniferous, 358.9 Mya. It is named after Devon, where rocks from this period were first studied; the first significant adaptive radiation of life on dry land occurred during the Devonian. Free-sporing vascular plants began to spread across dry land, forming extensive forests which covered the continents. By the middle of the Devonian, several groups of plants had evolved leaves and true roots, by the end of the period the first seed-bearing plants appeared. Various terrestrial arthropods became well-established. Fish reached substantial diversity during this time, leading the Devonian to be dubbed the "Age of Fishes." The first ray-finned and lobe-finned bony fish appeared, while the placoderms began dominating every known aquatic environment. The ancestors of all four-limbed vertebrates began adapting to walking on land, as their strong pectoral and pelvic fins evolved into legs.
In the oceans, primitive sharks became more numerous than in the Late Ordovician. The first ammonites, species of molluscs, appeared. Trilobites, the mollusc-like brachiopods and the great coral reefs, were still common; the Late Devonian extinction which started about 375 million years ago affected marine life, killing off all placodermi, all trilobites, save for a few species of the order Proetida. The palaeogeography was dominated by the supercontinent of Gondwana to the south, the continent of Siberia to the north, the early formation of the small continent of Euramerica in between; the period is named after Devon, a county in southwestern England, where a controversial argument in the 1830s over the age and structure of the rocks found distributed throughout the county was resolved by the definition of the Devonian period in the geological timescale. The Great Devonian Controversy was a long period of vigorous argument and counter-argument between the main protagonists of Roderick Murchison with Adam Sedgwick against Henry De la Beche supported by George Bellas Greenough.
Murchison and Sedgwick named the period they proposed as the Devonian System. While the rock beds that define the start and end of the Devonian period are well identified, the exact dates are uncertain. According to the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the Devonian extends from the end of the Silurian 419.2 Mya, to the beginning of the Carboniferous 358.9 Mya. In nineteenth-century texts the Devonian has been called the "Old Red Age", after the red and brown terrestrial deposits known in the United Kingdom as the Old Red Sandstone in which early fossil discoveries were found. Another common term is "Age of the Fishes", referring to the evolution of several major groups of fish that took place during the period. Older literature on the Anglo-Welsh basin divides it into the Downtonian, Dittonian and Farlovian stages, the latter three of which are placed in the Devonian; the Devonian has erroneously been characterised as a "greenhouse age", due to sampling bias: most of the early Devonian-age discoveries came from the strata of western Europe and eastern North America, which at the time straddled the Equator as part of the supercontinent of Euramerica where fossil signatures of widespread reefs indicate tropical climates that were warm and moderately humid but in fact the climate in the Devonian differed during its epochs and between geographic regions.
For example, during the Early Devonian, arid conditions were prevalent through much of the world including Siberia, North America, China, but Africa and South America had a warm temperate climate. In the Late Devonian, by contrast, arid conditions were less prevalent across the world and temperate climates were more common; the Devonian Period is formally broken into Early and Late subdivisions. The rocks corresponding to those epochs are referred to as belonging to the Lower and Upper parts of the Devonian System. Early DevonianThe Early Devonian lasted from 419.2 ± 2.8 to 393.3 ± 2.5 and began with the Lochkovian stage, which lasted until the Pragian. It spanned from 410.8 ± 2.8 to 407.6 ± 2.5, was followed by the Emsian, which lasted until the Middle Devonian began, 393.3± 2.7 million years ago. During this time, the first ammonoids appeared. Ammonoids during this time period differed little from their nautiloid counterparts; these ammonoids belong to the order Agoniatitida, which in epochs evolved to new ammonoid orders, for example Goniatitida and Clymeniida.
This class of cephalopod molluscs would dominate the marine fauna until the beginning of the Mesozoic era. Middle DevonianThe Middle Devonian comprised two subdivisions: first the Eifelian, which gave way to the Givetian 387.7± 2.7 million years ago. During this time the jawless agnathan fishes began to decline in diversity in freshwater and marine environments due to drastic environmental changes and due to the increasing competition and diversity of jawed fishes; the shallow, oxygen-depleted waters of Devonian inland lakes, surrounded by primitive plants, provided the environment necessary for certain early fish to develop such essential characteristics as well developed lungs, the ability to crawl out of the water and onto the land for short periods of time. Late DevonianFinally, the Late Devonian started with the Frasnian, 382.7 ± 2.8 to 372.2 ± 2.5, during which the first forests took shape on land. The first tetrapods appeared in the fossil record in the ensuing Famennian subdivisi
Intrusive rock
Intrusive rock is formed when magma crystallizes and solidifies underground to form intrusions, for example plutons, dikes, sills and volcanic necks. Intrusive rock forms within Earth's crust from the crystallization of magma. Many mountain ranges, such as the Sierra Nevada in California, are formed from large granite intrusions. Intrusions are one of the two ways igneous rock. Technically an intrusion is any formation of intrusive igneous rock. In contrast, an extrusion consists of extrusive rock. Large bodies of magma that solidify underground before they reach the surface of the crust are called plutons. Plutonic rocks form 7% of the Earth's current land surface. Coarse-grained intrusive igneous rocks that form at depth within the earth are called abyssal while those that form near the surface are called subvolcanic or hypabyssal. Intrusive structures are classified according to whether or not they are parallel to the bedding planes or foliation of the country rock: if the intrusion is parallel the body is concordant, otherwise it is discordant.
An intrusive suite is a group of plutons related in time and space.. Intrusions vary from mountain-range-sized batholiths to thin veinlike fracture fillings of aplite or pegmatite. Intrusions can be classified according to the shape and size of the intrusive body and its relation to the other formations into which it intrudes: Batholith: a large irregular discordant intrusion Chonolith: an irregularly-shaped intrusion with a demonstrable base Cupola: a dome-shaped projection from the top of a large subterranean intrusion Dike: a narrow tabular discordant body nearly vertical Laccolith: concordant body with flat base and convex top with a feeder pipe below Lopolith: concordant body with flat top and a shallow convex base, may have a feeder dike or pipe below Phacolith: a concordant lens-shaped pluton that occupies the crest of an anticline or trough of a syncline Volcanic pipe or volcanic neck: tubular vertical body that may have been a feeder vent for a volcano Sill: a thin tabular concordant body intruded along bedding planes Stock: a smaller irregular discordant intrusive Boss: a small stock A body of intrusive igneous rock which crystallizes from magma cooling underneath the surface of the Earth is called a pluton.
If the pluton is large, it may be called a stock. Intrusive rocks are characterized by large crystal sizes, as the individual crystals are visible, the rock is called phaneritic; this is as the magma cools underground, while cooling may be fast or slow, cooling is slower than on the surface, so larger crystals grow. If it runs parallel to rock layers, it is called a sill. If an intrusion makes rocks above rise to form a dome, it is called a laccolith. How deep-seated intrusions burst through the overlying strata causes intrusive rock to be recognized: Veins spread out into branches, or branchlike parts result from filled cracks, the high temperature is evident in how they alter country rock; as heat dissipation is slow, as the rock is under pressure, crystals form, no vitreous chilled matter is present. The intrusions did not flow. Contained gases could not escape through the thick strata, thus form cavities, which can be observed; because their crystals are of the rough equal size, these rocks are said to be equigranular.
There is no distinction between a first generation of large well-shaped crystals and a fine-grained ground-mass. The minerals of each have formed in a definite order, each has had a period of crystallization that may be distinct or may have coincided with or overlapped the period of formation of some of the other ingredients. Earlier crystals originated at a time when most of the rock was still liquid and are more or less perfect. Crystals are less regular in shape because they were compelled to occupy the spaces left between the already-formed crystals; the former case is said to be idiomorphic. There are many other characteristics that serve to distinguish the members of these two groups. For example, orthoclase is feldspar from granite, while its modifications occur in lavas of similar composition; the same distinction holds for nepheline varieties. Leucite is common in lavas but rare in plutonic rocks. Muscovite is confined to intrusions; these differences show the influence of the physical conditions under which consolidation takes place.
Intrusive rocks formed at greater depths are called abyssal. Some intrusive rocks solidified in fissures as dikes and intrusive sills at shallow depth and are called subvolcanic or hypabyssal, they show structures intermediate between those of plutonic rocks. They are commonly porphyritic and sometimes vesicular. In fact, many of them are petrologically indistinguishable from lavas of similar composition. Ellicott City Granodiorite Guilford Quartz Monzonite Methods of pluton emplacement Norbeck Intrusive Suite Volcanic rock Woodstock Quartz Monzonite
Jurassic
The Jurassic period was a geologic period and system that spanned 56 million years from the end of the Triassic Period 201.3 million years ago to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era known as the Age of Reptiles; the start of the period was marked by the major Triassic–Jurassic extinction event. Two other extinction events occurred during the period: the Pliensbachian-Toarcian extinction in the Early Jurassic, the Tithonian event at the end; the Jurassic period is divided into three epochs: Early and Late. In stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, Upper Jurassic series of rock formations; the Jurassic is named after the Jura Mountains within the European Alps, where limestone strata from the period were first identified. By the beginning of the Jurassic, the supercontinent Pangaea had begun rifting into two landmasses: Laurasia to the north, Gondwana to the south; this created more coastlines and shifted the continental climate from dry to humid, many of the arid deserts of the Triassic were replaced by lush rainforests.
On land, the fauna transitioned from the Triassic fauna, dominated by both dinosauromorph and crocodylomorph archosaurs, to one dominated by dinosaurs alone. The first birds appeared during the Jurassic, having evolved from a branch of theropod dinosaurs. Other major events include the appearance of the earliest lizards, the evolution of therian mammals, including primitive placentals. Crocodilians made the transition from a terrestrial to an aquatic mode of life; the oceans were inhabited by marine reptiles such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, while pterosaurs were the dominant flying vertebrates. The chronostratigraphic term "Jurassic" is directly linked to the Jura Mountains, a mountain range following the course of the France–Switzerland border. During a tour of the region in 1795, Alexander von Humboldt recognized the limestone dominated mountain range of the Jura Mountains as a separate formation that had not been included in the established stratigraphic system defined by Abraham Gottlob Werner, he named it "Jura-Kalkstein" in 1799.
The name "Jura" is derived from the Celtic root *jor via Gaulish *iuris "wooded mountain", borrowed into Latin as a place name, evolved into Juria and Jura. The Jurassic period is divided into three epochs: Early and Late. In stratigraphy, the Jurassic is divided into the Lower Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, Upper Jurassic series of rock formations known as Lias and Malm in Europe; the separation of the term Jurassic into three sections originated with Leopold von Buch. The faunal stages from youngest to oldest are: During the early Jurassic period, the supercontinent Pangaea broke up into the northern supercontinent Laurasia and the southern supercontinent Gondwana; the Jurassic North Atlantic Ocean was narrow, while the South Atlantic did not open until the following Cretaceous period, when Gondwana itself rifted apart. The Tethys Sea closed, the Neotethys basin appeared. Climates were warm, with no evidence of a glacier having appeared; as in the Triassic, there was no land over either pole, no extensive ice caps existed.
The Jurassic geological record is good in western Europe, where extensive marine sequences indicate a time when much of that future landmass was submerged under shallow tropical seas. In contrast, the North American Jurassic record is the poorest of the Mesozoic, with few outcrops at the surface. Though the epicontinental Sundance Sea left marine deposits in parts of the northern plains of the United States and Canada during the late Jurassic, most exposed sediments from this period are continental, such as the alluvial deposits of the Morrison Formation; the Jurassic was a time of calcite sea geochemistry in which low-magnesium calcite was the primary inorganic marine precipitate of calcium carbonate. Carbonate hardgrounds were thus common, along with calcitic ooids, calcitic cements, invertebrate faunas with dominantly calcitic skeletons; the first of several massive batholiths were emplaced in the northern American cordillera beginning in the mid-Jurassic, marking the Nevadan orogeny. Important Jurassic exposures are found in Russia, South America, Japan and the United Kingdom.
In Africa, Early Jurassic strata are distributed in a similar fashion to Late Triassic beds, with more common outcrops in the south and less common fossil beds which are predominated by tracks to the north. As the Jurassic proceeded and more iconic groups of dinosaurs like sauropods and ornithopods proliferated in Africa. Middle Jurassic strata are neither well studied in Africa. Late Jurassic strata are poorly represented apart from the spectacular Tendaguru fauna in Tanzania; the Late Jurassic life of Tendaguru is similar to that found in western North America's Morrison Formation. During the Jurassic period, the primary vertebrates living in the sea were marine reptiles; the latter include ichthyosaurs, which were at the peak of their diversity, plesiosaurs and marine crocodiles of the families Teleosauridae and Metriorhynchidae. Numerous turtles could be found in rivers. In the invertebrate world, several new groups appeared, including rudists (a reef-formi
