Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau

I love Ron Blakey's drawings of the evolution of the southwest and the Colorado Plateau. I'd really enjoy seeing a book from them on the Great Basin. It's astounding how many dramatic changes have taken place on the west coast and how realtively young much of the west is. Another area for such a treatment would be the Tibetan Plateau.

Blakely and Ranney's book brings the whole geology of the Southwest into perspective. I have for years tried to visualize what was going on with continents and super-continents and oceans and inland seas (and on and on) while hiking in the Grand Canyon, Zion, Escallante, Arches, and the rest of the Southwest. Then, this last year I was at the Arches NP visitor's center and here are these remarkable paintings showing the area around Arches as it was in various stages throughout the eons. Turns out they were out of this book which I immediately bought. What you get are unbelievably beautiful colored geography maps of the Southwest as it was in various times throughout geological history. You can see the continents move around, the seas come in and recede again, and the inland lakes and seas form. The outlines of the states are roughly shown to allow you to see what is where. I was finally able to visualize the whole thing. From Arches we drove down to the Grand Canyon and I truly saw it in a different light. The layers made much more sense and Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau definitely presented the geological history better than Grand Canyon NP does. It takes a while to digest this book just because there is so much there. I can not image how long it took the two authors to produce this but it is worth far more than they are charging. In the world of geology and the Southwest, this is truly Art!!! By the book a few weeks before you head to the Southwest. Set yourself aside an evening to read it then a second evening to just page through it and finally understand the whole geological story. Then go to the Southwest and find out you truly can be more in awe than you were the first time.

Millions of people know the landscapes of the Colorado Plateau very well--or at least they think they do. They've hiked over that land for years and enjoyed its contours and colors and felt its reality in their tired muscles, felt it as hard rock under their sleeping bags. But it turns out that maybe we haven't known that landscape so well after all. You can't fully know it until you can see into its past, into all of the geological action it contains. This book will come as a revelation to many who thought they knew these landscapes. Perhaps we knew abstractly that 100 million years ago there was something else going on in a particular spot. But this book brings those ages to life. Its illustrations are like being given x-ray vision into time. Whether your favorite spot is the Sedona red rocks or Bryce or Moab, you'll now be able to relate it to larger patterns both in space and time. The illustrations are backed up by a text that explains events more fully.

Full disclosure: I know both authors well. The amount of work that went into the images of the ancient geographies here [by Ron Blakey] is measured in man-years. Ron is a gifted geologist AND a gifted artist [primarily landscapes in oils] AND a gifted user of the latest imaging software. The results are one-of-a-kind spectacular. No one else on earth could have put these images together with SO much geologic knowledge [a lifetime as a professional geologist studying the sedimentary rocks of the Colorado Plateau] and could join with a former student {Wayne Ranney] who is a genius at explaining geology to laypersons. One-of-a-kind product for the only canyon on planet Earth we dare call Grand.

I have been searching for over 2 years for illustrations of when seas were present in the Southwest United States, particularly New Mexico as my family lived in the mountains there and found many sea shell fossils. This book is a gold mine of information and exactly what I've been looking for and so much more. The illustrations are beautiful and the text is very informative. I highly recommend it!