Publications

The Kirtland Shale or Fruitland Formation directly underlies the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary throughout most of the San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico and southwest Colorado. These formations have been known to be Late Cretaceous in age since the early 1900s. Now, with the greatly renewed interest in rocks adjacent to mass extinction boundaries, it is important to place more precise ages on s

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

No abstract available. 

Oils generated by Middle Ordovician rocks are found throughout the Mid-Continent and east-central regions of the United States. Gas chromatographic characteristics of these oils include a relatively high abundance of n-alkanes with carbon numbers less than 20, a strong predominance of odd-numbered n-alkanes between C10 and C20, and relatively small amounts of branched and cyclic alkanes. Saturated

The Upper Cretaceous Blackhawk and Neslen Formations in the eastern Uinta basin contain large amounts of thermogenic gas that was generated from interbedded humic-rich source rocks. The geometry and distribution of hydrocarbon source and reservoir rocks are controlled by depositional environment. The Blackhawk, composed of laterally extensive sandstone and locally interbedded carbonaceous siltston

Forty-eight core samples of ash-flow tuffs from Yucca Mountain, NV, were selected for comparative analysis by uranium-based methods to estimate past interaction with oxidizing water. Results aid in the selection of hydrologically isolated host rocks for radioactive waste disposal. U abundances were consistently more variable than thorium in whole rocks, suggesting some selective redistribution of

The San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico and southwest Colorado contains several Upper Cretaceous coal-bearing formations. The coals in these formations were deposited in environments associated with repeated transgressions and regressions of the Western Interior seaway in Late Cretaceous time. A detailed subsurface and surface study of the coal beds in one of these units, the Fruitland Formatio

No abstract available.

Oil shale from the lower part of the Eocene Green River Formation in the Piceance Creek Basin, Colorado, averages 0.13 weight percent fluorine, which is about twice that found in common shales, but is the same as the average amount found in some oil shales from other parts of the world. Some fluorine may reside in fluorapatite; however, limited data suggest that cryolite may be quantitatively more

Rectangular and stair-step pore reentrants in carbonate mudstones have been recognized previously as indirect evidence for anhydrite dissolution. In this study, direct evidence for subsurface dissolution of interstitial anhydrite in both dolomite grainstones and quartz sandstones includes: (1) cleavage-related dissolution fringe on anhydrite crystal surfaces, and (2) isolated remnants of optically

Comparison of several aspects of surface and underground methods of mining for large-scale oil shale extraction in the Piceance Creek Basin suggests that surface mining techniques may have several advantages over underground methods. For a production level of one million barrels of shale oil per day, potential advantages include those related to economics, environmental effects, and the overall na