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I think I would describe this outcrop as wild. Wild in the way that the layers of rock are contorted in every way imaginable. Wild in the internal structure of the layers. There seems to be a vertical fabric perpendicular to the bed boundaries. What kind of forces could deform rock like this? Or is it some other process creating these crazy patterns? Hello, I'm Myron Cook. What an amazingly wonderful place this is. As strange as it can get. I mean, I I think this is maybe the the most interesting strange outcrop I've ever come up to. And uh the first thing we want to know is what's going on here? How are we going to make sense of it? By the way, the locals call this the greeneyed monster. Now, that makes sense to me as I look at it. And I want to say that this is a remnant of Earth's healing powers. Now, that's a pretty provocative statement for me to say that. Why would I say this is a remnant of Earth's healing powers? By the end of this video, we'll know why. And it's it's going to be a fun journey. You know, the first thing we're going to do is make some observations and build our knowledge and and we'll we'll go on this trip together and have some fun. The first thing I want to do is take a closer look at these layers of rock. The layers are readily visible, but what interests me is the fabric within these layers. They have an orientation that's perpendicular to the layer boundaries. This is exactly the opposite of what we would expect. This is a very rare exception. I've only seen this phenomena a handful of times. Normally, what we would see is a fabric that's parallel to the bedding boundaries or at a close angle to the bedding boundaries. Another thing I can do here is take some dilute hydrochloric acid and put it on a sample of this rock. Um, I don't think it's going to show on video. You're going to have to trust me on this one. Uh, so I'm taking this dilute hydrochloric acid. Oh, and it fizzes like like crazy. For your old for you old-timers, it fizzes like Alka-Seltzer in water. Fizzes to no end. I'll try it here on camera. It's worth a try. Oh, maybe it is showing up. It's such a violent fizz. It is showing up. Okay. Okay, well that's good. And what this fizzing means is that it's calcium carbonate. It's a great test for limestone. If you put it on dolomite, it just fizzes very little or maybe not at all. But limestone, boy, it'll fizz like this. And this is fizzing extra vigorously because there's so much pore space in the rock. It is completely full of small holes and larger holes. Very high paracity. expanding our area of investigation. There's something here right above this outcrop I want to show you. It appears to be some sort of collapse feature. From higher above, more of these features come into view. Three large holes are readily visible above our interesting outcrop. Could they be related? Well, this is quite the hole in the ground here. A sinkhole. That's what I like to call it. Uh the cause of it is yet to be determined. Um it's made of limestone, kind of thinly bedded, platey. It has ver some of the similar textures as what we just saw. So, it's definitely deposited in the same basic way as far as this this rim here. and of and with the drone we saw there are a couple others just nearby. Looking more closely at the largest one named the devil's punch bowl, we see some classic features. Notice the wavy bedding here and the vertical fabric in this layer. Here is a typical sample of the rock. I'm thinking that these are somehow connected to the outcrop we were just looking at. So, as a young geologist coming out and making these observations, I would assume they're connected until I'm proved otherwise by other observations. So, we'll go we'll work along with that assumption. These rock outcrops on the other side of the river catch my eye as well. Here on the other side of the river, we see similar features. We see some layering. It's not as thick. Most of the layers, individual layers aren't as thick. We see the vertical texture here, although it's more subtle. We don't see as m much of the wavy, the dramatic, crazy uh contortions in the bedding, but we see local examples of it. Much of the rock has this very distinctive look to it. It is completely full of holes, very porous. It seems to be somewhat better organized, but overall very similar. I think it's it was deposited with by the same processes. Well, what do you think of this? It's kind of a mound, a teepee, a small volcano. Gosh, it could be about anything, couldn't it? And the and that fantastic outcrop is just right down here past this tree here. So, could it be related? We have to assume at this point it is related. And hopefully uh when you see something like this, you're starting to to formulate some thoughts and some ideas as to what might be going on at that wild outcrop. The cone we just visited is here, but notice there's another interesting feature in this area. The ridge along here is what catches my eye. There's a lot to contemplate in this one scene. We have the greeneyed monster outcrop, the collapse features above it, the curious limestone on the other side of the river, the cone-shaped feature, and there are many of those scattered about, and the ridge. But there are still more key observations we need to make. Let's look at an outcrop right in this area. I smile big when I see an outcrop like this. A good friend of mine, a local geologist by the name of Tom Anderson, showed me this. I'm grateful he did. Thank you, Tom. And I think many of you have already figured some of the basics of this out. We have a very steeply dipping rock here at my back. It's near vertical. And then right up against it are nearly horizontal layers of rock. This is a thinly bedded limestone and has some of the characteristics we've seen elsewhere in this strange limestone. And it just seems to be plastered up against this. Very interesting. And we're about a mile or so from the river. There's a little drainage here that goes on down towards the river that way. And I think we need to investigate this drainage just a bit more. Go upstream a bit and see what we see, shall we? Quite a beautiful place, isn't it? Boy, I enjoy walking along here. And here, right in front of me on this side of this creek, there's a little branch of it here, but on this drainage, I see this um strange limestone welldeveloped. And in fact, in the distance on the other side, just over those flowers there, you see a thin layer of it on the other side. And you can't see it, but I see it really well right over here as well on the other side of this drainage. It seems to be hugging the drainage. This is interesting to think about, isn't it? I was able to track the limestone deposits along the drainage in this area. There are some interesting hills in the area that catch my eye because from a distance they appear to be capped by limestone and limestone like this is out of place. It doesn't fit the regional geology. So clearly we need to investigate it. This one is named Till. Let's check it out. on top of Tea Hill, some 400 ft above the river or so, as I walk along this on top of this uh limestone, I see this pattern here, which looks very familiar with some of the other patterns we've seen earlier down by the river. So, this deposit seems quite similar. We'll keep looking, but this pattern is very distinctive. Nearby, we see more interesting patterns on the rock that are very distinctive. What do you notice about this sequence of gray rocks that sit on top of the red formation? It's resistant to erosion. It has a lot of layers in it, and it looks like limestone. In fact, it is limestone. It's very interesting to follow the contact between the red formation underneath and the limestone above. It's an unconformity. And this informs us that the red chug water formation underwent erosion for a period and then there was deposition of the limestone on top. What a pleasant hike coming here, hiking up to the top of Tea Hill. And h yeah, I like that. And I look at this limestone here and I'll tell you, it's looking kind of familiar to me. I'll show you some photos here. Uh yeah, it's looking familiar. Very familiar to what we saw right down by the river. And that's all interesting. We see the the same features, the textural features. We see layer upon layer upon layer with these vertical lines within it of this limestone. So, it clearly was deposited in the same way those layers were down down below down by the river, but we're 400 ft above the river. And the way this sits on top of these red beds here, this is oh 40t thick or more here. Uh but the way it sits on top and then we know that over there I know uh over on top a round top over there I won't hike up there. It has the same material on top of it. And it turns out there are plateaus scattered all about this area with this material on top of it. So, as we proceed forward with our investigation, we're going to have to figure out uh why it's here and how it got here, which is a very fascinating story. From above, we see the flat top of Tea Hill and the river some 400 ft below. The greeneyed monster outcrop is here. A quick comment. If you'd like to get an insider view of how I create these videos and learn a bit more about me, you might check out the the link that I put in the description of a video. It turns out that Cowboy State Daily had a film crew come out and follow me around. It was fun. And what are we to make of this big mound behind me with the steep face here on this side protruding out from the hillside? It kind of reminds me of that uh that mound structure or tepee looking structure we saw earlier. You have to assume that they kind of have a similar origin. And I think maybe these are the clues that help us unravel all these deposits of limestone, whether they be down here by the river or way up on the hills over here. Yeah, I think it's all tied together. And of course, I've been holding information back on you. I'm kind of sly that way. It turns out the very best evidence for to to explain all this is right behind the camera back here. Let me show you. Look for features we saw in the ancient outcrops we visited. These deposits are made of a special type of limestone called travertine which forms in mineralrich hot springs or in caves. Terraces of various sizes are a common feature of these deposits. The source of the mineral hot springs water is right here. This artisian spring is about 40 ft above the river. It flows at about 1,500 gall per minute at a temperature of 127° F. The dissolved solids in the water is about six times normal drinking water. As the pressure drops and the water cools, CO2 is released as gas bubbles. This release of CO2 causes calcium carbonate to precipitate out of solution forming travertine. Travertine is well known as a beautiful building stone. Rather amazing, isn't it? Just astounding. And I think it's time to reveal the location. I think that'd be helpful. I'm in Thermopoulos, Wyoming. Uh Thermopoulos, it turns out the meaning of it in Greek is hot city. And well, that makes sense, doesn't it? I have so many memories here. We'd come to the to the swimming areas, especially in the winter with my kids and and enjoy the cold, you know, the cold air and the hot water. It's a great mix. Remember one time I had a contest with my boys to see who could roll around in the snow at the edge of the springs or the pool area the longest before they jumped in. Just just great memories, lots of fun. Once you see a modern system like this and all the features and how what the rock looks like and how it it kind of lays in so to speak, it's quite easy to identify it in the ancient record. And we've seen ancient examples and that's how geologists build their their knowledge. They go out, they see modern examples, then they go into the rock record hiking around doing their mapping and they stumble on some some travertine that has similar features to this. they know immediately what it's all about. And that's kind of how that process works. It's it's a lot of fun to be involved in. Now, some of you may be tempted to think, "Oh, this is really cool now. I know. End of story. Let's go." Well, really, I think uh we've got about half the story in. Uh we've got a lot of answer uh questions to be answered. Uh for instance, where's all this hot water coming from? What's the source of the heat? Is it some magma chamber or something underground? Why is it artisian flowing up to the surface even above the river? That's quite unusual. Uh what else? Um what other questions do we Well, the source of the minerals, all the mineral uh minerals in the water to precipitate these massive amounts of limestone throughout this whole area. And I'm sure there's some other questions that you're thinking about. So, it's time to get into that and figure out really why these springs are here precisely and and how they how they formed in the bigger picture. So, we've still got some fun. Let's let's go on. But first, I'd like to do a comparison between the modern and ancient travertine deposits. This area reminds me of parts of the greeneyed monster outcrop. These features under the bridge also remind me of the greeneyed outcrop. This texture that we saw on the top of Tea Hill certainly reminds me of the modern deposits we see. A wonderful example of modern travertine deposition in Turkey. It's nearly enveloped a Roman tomb. The patterns are reminiscent of what we saw on Tea Hill. Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park has a wonderful example of a recently abandoned cone. I think Mammoth can help us understand the big eye as well. I think that the rounded forms that we see in this area are just small versions of the big eye. At one time, the Big Eye had a nice smooth rounded front to it, but it has since been eroded into revealing the internal structure. What do you think about the three sink holes? I think they're larger, rounder versions of the current active big spring. Try to imagine in each one of these holes a beautiful pool of hot mineral-rich waters pouring out over the edges and building large travertine terraces. Finally, I hope you noticed the origin of this vertically oriented fibrous travertine that we've seen everywhere. It's pretty clear on the front edge of this travertine terrace. This isn't the only way this fibrous uh travertine forms, but it's probably the most common. A wonderful thing about the Hot Springs State Park is that there's a herd of buffalo roaming about. Now, right behind me is a really important clue as to why we have these thermal hot springs. We have these steeply dipping layers of rock. Huh. You know, that's not so unusual. We've seen a lot of steeply dipping rock. But you know the mountains off in the distance, they have a gentle dip in the opposite direction. They're coming together. These very steeply dipping and the mountains very gently dipping, coming together, coming together. So the layers from the mountain go deep underground and now they seem to come back up here. I think that's an important clue. Steeply dipping rocks near to the springs. Why is that so important? Here is a nice perspective of the tilted rock layers. The springs are located here and we see the steeply dipping rock layers in this area. Notice off in the distance the gentle slopes of the mountains. Looking more closely at the mountain, we see the hints of a canyon cut into it. It's the spectacular Wind River Canyon that the Big Horn River has cut. We clearly see great formations of rock dipping down into the ground towards Thermopoulos. Looking in the other direction up river, we see that there are many formations of rock that are dipping in this manner. To the whiteboard we go. Now, this is a rather strange drawing. It is a cross-sectional view. So, let me uh put a tree here. I'll put it right here. Here we go. Looking sideways into the earth. A cut into the earth. Uh, and I have this gigantic hose. So, imagine that. A gigantic garden hose that's from above ground comes down underneath the earth, comes back up to here. And at this end, the we'll restrict the size of the hose. I can't really show that here, but we'll make it much smaller. And over here, I have this giant funnel. I'm pouring water in. And you know what's going to happen? It's going to start building the water level up because it can't escape fast enough out here. So the water level here might build up. We'll say right here in this case. So somewhere about in there we have our water level which means there's pressure at this end. So yeah, water is going to come out kind of like a fountain. And here we have an artisian spring. And I think this is a a simple way to envision how this artisian water can happen. But now we need to look at the real world, the geology world, a more realistic sketch of nature out here and the geology that we're dealing with. Although it's simplified obviously, still it is a cross-sectional view. So I've drawn my little tree here and this is ground level. Going along here, right here would be the thermoploolis hot springs area. We go along. We rise up up on the side of the mountain and we have all these gently dipping layers of rock on the side of the mountain coming down underground towards Thermopoulos. Now here we have this fold. Uh I've got this dashed line to show that this layer for instance used to come up and over the fold but got eroded down to the ground level here. Uh the blue layer is the permeable layer. That's the aquifer that has the water in it. And of course, we don't have uh big hoses or things, but we do have layers of rock that can get confined in certain situations. And what is that? Well, here I have a layer of shale underneath it that acts as quote the rubber of the hose and a layer of shale above it to confine it. And the rainwater is coming down up on the mountain and it's infiltrating this layer of rock and building up. It's just that's where the water enters, but it's having troubles escaping out here and it builds up pressure. I'm sure many of you are ahead of me now on this whole story and you're thinking about this fold and what might happen here and how it affects the aquifer. And indeed, yes. This fold of course where you bend this rock you have faults and fractures and they go deep into the ground and they're going to intersect this aquifer and they provide conduits for fluid to escape this overpressured fluid and and rise up to the surface. And there we have our hot springs. Using Google Earth, let's take a look at the fold that I mentioned on the whiteboard. It's referred to as the thermoplas anacline and this is the western end of it. The blue dashed lines show how just one of many layers at one time went up and over the fold and have subsequently been eroded. The hot springs and the community of Thermopoulos are way down here. So this is a large fold and we'll continue to follow it. In this area, the anacline isn't easily visible, but as we continue along, it will become more visible again. The hot springs are right here. A great view of Roundtop, Tea Hill, and Monument Hill, all capped with travertine. Looking down on Tea Hill, we see Monument Hill in the background, as well as the active area of travertine deposition. The eroded anacline is clearly in view. I've put a white dashed line on one of the layers to show what has been eroded. It's not surprising that there are many fractures and faults at the crest of this anacline providing conduits for this hot mineral water to rise to the surface. The main aquifer is about 2,000 ft underground. With our understanding of overpressured water, we can now make sense of some of the features we've observed. Tepee Spring. Really an interesting feature. beautiful. Well, it turns out it's man-made, but the processes are similar. They have taken water from the big spring, this uh mineral laden water, pump it out a pipe at the top, let it cascade down, and start to build this cone. And we've seen some cones not too uh uh different than this where nature has because of the overpressured water coming up, bubbling up, building up cones uh scattered about. As I recall, there are like 40 cones that have been identified throughout this area, all ancient. Uh there is no modern cone that I can think of over out here. So very interesting indeed. Water is only pumped during the spring and summer months, and this has built up since 1906. Amazing. Mineral water coming up along a fracture or fault formed this ridge we observed. It's pretty impressive to think that the water came up some 2,000 ft along this fracture or fault. But what about the source of the minerals to precipitate so much travertine? And what's the heat source? Let's go up the river about halfway through the Wind River Canyon. Here we see about 800 feet of Mississippian age or about 350 millionyear-old limestone. This is the main aquifer and when slightly acidic rainwater percolates into it, dissolution of the limestone occurs, which of course is reprecipitated at the hot springs. One might would think that there's a hot molten magma body under the ground providing the heat for this water. But it's a simpler story. At its deepest point, the aquifer is about 6,000 ft underground. And due to the natural thermal gradient of the Earth, it sits at about 160°. And of course, the water does too. As the water slowly rises from the depths to the springs, it cools off to the 127° flowing temperature. Hopefully, you've noticed that the vast majority of the travertine deposits are not too far above the river, and they're also quite close to it. Do you have thoughts as to why that would be the case? To help explain this, of course, we turn to the trusty old whiteboard. And I've gotten a bit fancy here. I've tried to draw a 3D block diagram. So this face here would be a cut down into the earth as well as this side over here. And this top surface with the trees on it, I want it to be flat here depicted as flat. Uh this layer is the aquifer and it's been cut by a fault. In this case, a reverse fault. It could be a normal fault or it could be just fractures. And if the fault is homogeneous in in our imaginary world anyway, it could flow the water would flow at a similar rate all along the ground surface along this vault. A simple thought experiment for us to think about. Let's imagine if we had some massive earthmoving equipment and we decided to come out here and dig a great big deep giant hole along the fault out here and just start digging down. Well, if you think about what would happen, it wouldn't take too long to where all the water would want to leak in that hole cuz we're getting closer to the aquifer. Less pressure is needed to bring that water up to to the bottom of that hole. So, it all wants to go in that deep hole. Well, if you think about it, rivers actually are kind of the same thing, aren't they? They they are cutting holes or not really holes, canyons across these faults and fractures, and they become the low spot. And that's where the vast majority uh of the springs want to come up is right near the river bottom. In fact, people have seen or do see uh hot springs in the bottom of the river. Armed with this knowledge, I think we can better understand the amazing unconformity we visited earlier. A cross-sectional view of this gully or draw that we find so interesting, at least I do, with this cool unconformity. So, we start with it cutting down into these steeply dipping rocks. In fact, on one side, we have this layer here that's of limestone that's really quite steep. And as it cuts down, it happens to intersect a a fracture or fault that's tied into the aquifer, this overpressured hot water, and and it springs up along the bottom of this draw. And now, instead of erosion occurring, deposition occurs of this travertine, and it starts to fill in. through time it fills in in some areas some pretty thick deposits of travertine and then as it seems to happen all over in this area the the spring dies out moves to a different place it gets plugged up with travertine or something and erosion starts to occur again. So, here we go with erosion. And it cuts down. It's cutting out most of the travertine deposits and continues to cut deeper down here. And we have a new wash with remnants of this travertine along the sides of the wash, creating this wonderful angular unconformity. This all seems to make good sense, but we have an issue here. We've noticed several hills high above the river capped with travertine. How could this possibly be? I think Wind River Canyon provides us the answer. Let's think about time and what the river might have looked like millions of years ago. The Big Horn River, also known as the Wind River on the south side of the canyon, is steadily cutting deeper into the earth. And we know that this has been the case for a very long time. In fact, it has cut this entire canyon. This simple deduction informs us that in the past the bottom of the river was higher, much higher. Returning to the travertine capped hills, we can deduce that the bottom of the river was near to these travertine deposits. Travertine is more resistant to erosion than the underlying red beds. Therefore, everything around it eroded more quickly, leaving the hills that we observe today. The various levels of travertine deposits document the down cutting history of the Big Horn River. That's just really fun to think about. At the beginning of this video, I mentioned that this is a remnant of Earth's healing powers. For thousands of years, natives came to these springs seeking these powers. This tradition has continued on to modern times as people from far and wide come to enjoy their many benefits. The geology informs us that these healing waters should be present in the distant future for people to enjoy. What a wonderful adventure we've been on together, haven't we? Uh making these observations, putting it all together, and learning about hot springs, mineral hot springs, and and travertine development and all that fun stuff. But there's more to do here in Thermopoulos. There's some great fishing. Uh you have the Wind River Canyon, super cool geology there. You have the thermal springs that we've been talking about, of course, and you have a great dinosaur museum to boot. So come on and check it out. And I hope you've enjoyed watching this video as much as I've enjoyed making it. Thank you for watching.