Grand Canyon Rocks Reveal
Continent's Past

Through a series of expeditions to the famed Grand Canyon, Karl Karlstrom, professor of geology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and his Grand Canyon Project team are collecting and studying the Canyon's rock and sediment. They are confident that what they are finding will allow a greater understanding of how the continents evolved, why certain land masses formed, broke up and re-formed the way they did, and how the Earth's past geologic activity relates to its current, albeit slow, shifting and re-formation.

Members of Karlstrom's research team
pose on site in a remote region
of the Grand Canyon.

Photo courtesy of
University of New Mexico

The researchers' discovery process requires time-intensive techniques to study the rocks and extract evidence about their layering patterns. They also analyze fossil fragments, minerals and volcanic ash particles to obtain their data. The NSF-funded effort is a collaborative one involving researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts, and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, in addition to Karlstrom and other geologists from the University of New Mexico.

"For geologists, the Canyon represents an open book with a two billion year history and a spectacularly exposed geologic story to be told," says Karlstrom. "We are only beginning to read that story."

Next year, results and on-going research from the Grand Canyon Project will be on display for park visitors through the "Trail of Time" exhibit, a one-kilometer walking trail along the south rim of the Canyon. Currently in development, the trail will be marked with informative displays and interactive models designed to represent the history of the continent and the Canyon region through geologic time. The idea for the exhibit was proposed by Karlstrom and Michael Williams, a structural geologist and associate professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, as a way to increase and expand on the geologic information currently displayed at the park.