Finding Fossils...: The Permian Capitan Reef

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The Permian Capitan Reef

For the first weekend in April, my Reef Ecosystems class joined the Sedimentology and Stratigraphy class on a trek to the Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas. This was a very exciting trip for me because the Guads expose one of the most beautiful and well known fossils reefs in North America; the Permian Capitan Reef. Although I ave been studying reef systems for 7 years, I had never made it to the Capitan reef until now!

This post features shots of the beautiful exposures, vistas, and fossils in the Guadalupe Mountains. To Start, here's El Capitan!

Our first stop was at Dark Canyon, one of the back reef localities. There is a lot of weird stuff going on here and since I had never been here before, I felt as "deer-in-the-headlights" as the students did.

The eye of the Capitan?

So much encrusting Archaeolithoporella!

Close up of Archaeolithoporella

There were some really beautiful articulated crinoids!

As well as some branching bryozoans

Look at those aragonite botryoids!!!

This cavity is all cemented up!

Many encrusters!

Our next stop was the gem of the day, Walnut Canyon. At this site the outcrop has been acid washed making for some absolutely gorgeous surfaces!

More stunning cements, now with some sponges

I got really excited about the cements!

So many amazing sponges, they are just gorgeous!

This site was one of the neatest spots! Look at the long linear feature that cuts across the image (just above my scale bar). That is one long thin platy sponge (the outcrop cuts through a thin sheet so it looks like a stick). Below and above that, all the "spongy" looking brown stuff is an encrusted mass of sponges and Archaeolitoporella.... then the grey bits are all aragonite botryoids that filled in the cavities created by the reef builders. How awesome is that?!?

Here is a close up of the platy sponge and the branching sponges hanging down from it!

Huge cements in the cavities!

More sponges (although these sponges (the lighter bits) seem to be totally coated in the darker Archeolithoporella; there are almost no cavities in this part of the outcrop!)

The top surface of a platy sponge

Another beautiful sponge!

Guadalupia explanata

And another!

Lemonia cylindrica (I believe)

My student Chiara standing on a huge crack that is encrusted by marine organisms.

Our third stop was Carlsbad Caverns. In the parking lot there are some gorgeous teepee structures.... they are HUGE and the cements are ridiculously beautiful as well as some amazingly large pisoids!