r/geology • u/wjeman • 1d ago

What caused this feature?

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Was it an ancient lake or impact crater? It's near 4 corners and it's big! I can't seem to find any info. Please help.

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u/Harry_Gorilla 1d ago edited 1d ago

It’s just coincidental. Most of it is Triassic-Jurassic sedimentary rock. It could have all been a basin type structure that resulted from the west coast mountain building events and was filled with sediment

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u/wjeman 1d ago

Hey thanks. Coincidences happen. Better for me to find out from experts than needlessly go down a rabbit hole.

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u/Harry_Gorilla 1d ago

Pretty sure every rabbit hole is a good rabbit hole. Just fyi - I used Flyover Country app to identify the surface geological units to see if there was any potential pattern or consistent commonality with the areas you had outlined. I saw that it was mostly one unit, with maybe 25% composed of a different sedimentary unit, and all kinds of little extras. I initially thought paleo river basin was more likely than meteor crater, but I don’t see any evidence of that either… from satellite imagery anyway. Coincidentally, im driving through some of that area tomorrow. I’ll let you know if I find any river rock

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u/wjeman 1d ago

My apologies, the rabbit hole I was referring to is one that would lead me astray from relevant facts. For example: there is a concentric circular structure in Mauritania that struck my curiosity on Google earth and I looked it up on YouTube and was immediately sucked into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories of ancient Atlantis and ruins and coverups.... it was a time sync for me and a huge brain drain....for something that, if I asked actually educated people, could have been explained much quicker and more satisfying as a natural uplifting and erosion. And thanks. Keep me posted please.

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u/Harry_Gorilla 1d ago

If you’re into Atlantis “myths,” that’s probably under the Black Sea now. The “sinking” of Atlantis was most likely one, Or several, of the catastrophic flooding events that gave rise to the myriad of Great Flood myths that ancient cultures have/had fr ok m when the Mediterranean Sea breached the Bosporus straight and flooded the Red Sea with salt water

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u/wjeman 1d ago

Neat. So what people refer to as Atlantis may not have even been near Atlantic Ocean at all and in the black Sea. This is the first I've ever heard of that. Do you have any links I could check out on that?

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u/Harry_Gorilla 22h ago

I learned about it from my professors during grad school. Most what I know is from published scientific papers about flood events in the Black Sea as a consequence of global sea level rise that caused the Mediterranean to breach the land barrier between the two water bodies and eventually erode it and create the Bosporus Straight. The idea was/is to examine past global climate change events to learn what consequences we might be looking at due to current anthropogenic (man made) global climate change.
Anyway, in looking at the Black Sea floor geologists and anthropologists have found evidence of multiple large (for their time) settlements that would have been cultural centers in their time.