"If you traveled back in time, you wouldn't recognize Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. More than 250 million years ago, this place was an ocean. Over time, the churning of Earth's crust raised the seabed, and it became dry land. Dinosaurs reigned on the young plain as it toggled between desert and tropical climes, then stood witness when an invading ocean severed the continent. The channel receded after 34 million years, and the continental plate continued to rise to form the high deserts of today."
"The landscape has been a meticulous archivist, and its stratigraphy reveals a geologic history between 30 million and 300 million years old. The extraordinary preservation of all these years in the monument's rocks, landforms and fossils makes Grand Staircase-Escalante special. Now, however, it is threatened by the Trump administration's land-management policies. Geologists say that no other terrestrial record of this time period is as complete."
Grand Staircase-Escalante contains a remarkably complete terrestrial stratigraphic record spanning roughly 30 to 300 million years, preserving transitions from ancient seabed to deserts and tropical environments and multiple marine incursions. Wind and water have exposed cliffs and terraces that reveal layered rock, landforms, and fossils, enabling detailed study of Earth's past. President Bill Clinton designated the nearly 1.9‑million‑acre monument in 1996 under the Antiquities Act. The Bureau of Land Management oversees the area, but limited resources and shifting federal priorities, including proposals to downsize the monument, have constrained research and prevented full scientific realization of its potential.
Read at High Country News
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