How was the Green River Formation formed?

How was the Green River Formation formed?

The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. The sedimentary layers were formed in a large area named for the Green River, a tributary of the Colorado River.

Where is Green River Formation?

The Green River Formation. One of the most important fossil sites for understanding the Eocene is found at Green River, located in western Colorado, eastern Utah and southwestern Wyoming in the United States.

What type of Lagerstatten is the Green River Formation?

The Green River Lagerstätte A lagerstätte is a sedimentary rock unit with an extraordinary fossil content. The Green River swamps and lakes provided an exceptional environment for fossil formation. The lakes and swamps were calm environments where remains were quickly buried by sediment.

How much oil is in the Green River Formation?

Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated a total of 4.285 trillion barrels of oil in-place in the oil shale of the three principal basins of the Eocene Green River Formation.

What kind of formation is the Green River Formation?

Green River Formation. Heliobatis radians, Green River Formation, Fossil Butte National Monument. The Green River Formation is an Eocene geologic formation that records the sedimentation in a group of intermountain lakes in three basins along the present-day Green River in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.

Where is the Green River in the United States?

/  38.18917°N 109.88528°W  / 38.18917; -109.88528 The Green River, located in the western United States, is the chief tributary of the Colorado River. The watershed of the river, known as the Green River Basin, covers parts of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado.

Where is the Greater Green River basin located?

By HENRY W. ROEHLER ABSTRACT The greater Green River basin is an intermontane desert that occupies about 20,000 square miles of the Central Rocky Mountains in southwest Wyoming, northeast Utah, and northwest Colorado. The basin is divided by intrabasin anticlines into four structural and topographic subbasins.

What kind of rocks are in the Green River basin?

The structural framework of the greater Green River basin was established during the Laramide orogeny. Eocene rocks crop out across more than 80 percent of the greater Green River basin area, where they are as much as 10,000 ft thick and compose parts of the intertongued Wasatch, Green River, and Bridger (Washakie) Formations.