Life in Stone: Fossils of the Colorado Plateau

The Colorado Plateau is world famous for its geological formations, but mainly for the deep canyons and dramatic sandstone shapes into which it erodes: the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley spires, Utah arches and slot canyons. All of this results from the Colorado Plateau being the best preserved slice of sedimentary rock on Earth. But sedimentary rock also means that the Colorado Plateau is rich with smaller rock formations, with a drama within the scenic drama, a record of life evolving out of single-celled organisms into half a billion years of trilobites, forests, dinosaurs, and humans. Indeed, we owe much of the grandeur of the Grand Canyon to eons of sea creatures whose shells and quiet toil built its rock. "Life in Stone" refocuses our experience of the Colorado Plateau onto this drama of life, showing how famous landscapes tell different chapters of life's story. Monument Valley, for example, hides amphibian bones from when it was a river floodplain some 300 million years ago. This might just be a more meaningful vision of Monument Valley than the movie-induced vision of the US cavalry riding to the rescue, or a merely aesthetic vision of a pretty sunset. But this book is quite pretty with photos and maps and illustrations and charts to help us envision how the landscape changed through time, what life lived upon it, and what their fossils look like now. It helps us recognize dinosaur footprints, with which the Colorado Plateau is rich. Christa Sadler, as a respected river and hiking guide, has spent more time immersed in these landscapes than most academic geologists, so these landscapes and geological eras are far from classroom abstractions for her, and this book helps bring them to life for the rest of us.

Christa Sadler does a superb job in this well illustraded book published by the Grand Canyon Association. She covers 1.8 billion years of fossil history on the Colorado Plateau; as well as what the geologic record shows the region to have been like during this history. I recently attended a lecture by Ms. Sadler at the Carl Hayden Visitor Center in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (put on by the Glen Canyon Natural History Association) where she presented this history in a slide presentation and a fossil exhibit. Her enthusiasm and knowledge on the topic is evident with every word she said and motion she made on stage. After reading this book, I finally had a complete understanding of the vast history of life in this region, as well as how the fossils record was preserved and the geology of the land that preserved them. I highly recommend this wonderful book. I great companion to this book would be "Carving Grand Canyon" by Wayne Ranney. >>>>>>><<<<<<< <br /> <br />A Guide to my Book Rating System: <br /> <br />1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper. <br />2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead. <br />3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted. <br />4 stars = Good book, but not life altering. <br />5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.