{"id":8591,"date":"2018-06-01T16:13:16","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T16:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8591"},"modified":"2018-06-01T16:13:16","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T16:13:16","slug":"missing-millions-of-years-of-rgv-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=8591","title":{"rendered":"Missing: Millions of Years of RGV History"},"content":{"rendered":"

UTRGV professor researching geological mysteries<\/i><\/h3>\n

by Maria Elena Hernandez<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"PHOTO-2---Dr.-Juan-Gonzalez-(UTRGV-Photo-by-David-Pike)\"<\/a>RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0<\/strong>For geologist Dr. Juan Gonz\u00e1lez, time travel is a simple road trip along Expressway 83.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe further west you go, the further back in time you go,\u201d said\u00a0Gonz\u00e1lez<\/a>, a UTRGV associate professor in the\u00a0School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences<\/a>\u00a0(SEEMS).<\/p>\n

The rocks on the UTRGV Edinburg Campus are 1.8 million years old. Traveling west into Starr County, you’ll hit the\u00a0Goliad Formation<\/a>, which is 5 million to 7 million years old. By the time you reach the Roma cliffs, you\u2019re at what was a beach environment 43 million years ago.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI was driving to the Rio Grande Valley from New Orleans (in 2009), and all I saw was flat coastal plain, and I figured there is not much here,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said. \u201cBut shortly after, they took me on this field trip and it was an eye opener.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0That\u2019s because Gonz\u00e1lez, a Quaternary geologist, could see volcanic ash along the formations, which are millions of years old.<\/p>\n

Yes, volcanic ash.\u00a0In the Rio Grande Valley.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cNow, do you know of any volcanoes nearby?\u201d he said rhetorically.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cI started researching the literature for any information on the ash,\u201d he said, \u201cand nothing has been done. Nothing. I could not find a single reference to this outcrop.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The sediment is now clay, he explained, but the clay originated from volcanic ash.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis light color has a very unique composition. This was from a magma that was very viscous,\u201d he said. \u201cIt could not flow. So when the caldera of the volcano exploded, it exploded violently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0In fact, the explosion was so violent it left a layer of volcanic ash that\u2019s 20 meters thick (almost 66 inches). And it did it in a single eruption.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThis clearly caused climate change,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said. \u201cSome species might have gone extinct.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0While Gonz\u00e1lez and his colleagues debate whether the ash fell within a few days or months, they have verified the age of the formation, called the Catahoula Formation. Two independent labs have calculated that the formation is about 27.2 million years old.<\/p>\n

\u00a0With that information, they\u2019re working to find the source of the volcanic ash, which extends south into Mexico and north toward Three Rivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have good candidates. With that age, we can go back and see, based on previous work, what volcanoes were active at the time,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said.<\/p>\n

However, the age verification of the Catahoula Formation with volcanic ash is part of another mystery. The Goliad Formation above it is 5 million to 7 million years old.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Juan Gonz\u00e1lez, a UTRGV associate professor in the School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences (SEEMS) and a Quaternary geologist, says there is a puzzling geological formation about 27 million years old called the Catahoula Formation in Starr County. The deposit is clay now, but it originated from volcanic ash. The riddle for geologists is, if there are no volcanoes near Starr County, where did this 66-foot deep deposit of volcanic ash come from? Capping the volcanic ash formation is the Goliad Formation, dated at 5 million to 7 million years old. Gonz\u00e1lez and associates now are trying to find out what happened to the 20 million years of history between the two formations. Photo: David Pike\/UTRGV<\/p><\/div>\n

So, what happened to the 20 million years between the two formations?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know what happened,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said. \u201cWhatever was there was lost, washed away and lost for good.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while that may have disappeared, there is still much more research to do on the geological formations in the Rio Grande Valley, he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cWe argue that when this ash was raining down, the shoreline must have been very close to where we are (in Starr County),\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said. \u201cI’m interested in hopefully one day finding the fossil of a fish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Access to the geological sites is not limited to professors. UTRGV students also take field trips, usually at the end of a semester, to study the formations.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly, there is a lot of interesting geology,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez said.<\/p>\n

You can learn more about the research at the UTRGV School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences by visiting\u00a0UTRGV.edu\/SEEMS<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ABOUT UTRGV<\/strong><\/p>\n

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) was created by the Texas Legislature in 2013 as the first major public university of the 21st century in Texas. This transformative initiative provided the opportunity to expand educational opportunities in the Rio Grande Valley, including a new School of Medicine, and made it possible for residents of the region to benefit from the Permanent University Fund \u2013 a public endowment contributing support to the University of Texas System and other institutions.<\/p>\n

UTRGV has campuses and off-campus research and teaching sites throughout the Rio Grande Valley including in Boca Chica Beach, Brownsville (formerly The University of Texas at Brownsville campus), Edinburg (formerly The University of Texas-Pan American campus), Harlingen, McAllen, Port Isabel, Rio Grande City, and South Padre Island. UTRGV, a comprehensive academic institution, enrolled its first class in the fall of 2015, and the School of Medicine welcomed its first class in the summer of 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UTRGV professor researching geological mysteries by Maria Elena Hernandez RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS \u2013\u00a0For geologist Dr. Juan Gonz\u00e1lez, time travel is a simple road trip along Expressway 83. \u201cThe further west you go, the further back in time you go,\u201d said\u00a0Gonz\u00e1lez, a UTRGV associate professor in the\u00a0School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences\u00a0(SEEMS). The rocks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8594,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8591\/revisions\/8594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}