Muav Limestone

rdf:langString Muav Limestone

rdf:langString either the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone or Redwall Limestone . Locally underlies Temple Butte Formation that fills narrow paleovalleys cut into the Muav Limestone.

rdf:langString Middle Cambrian

rdf:langString representative sequence of Redwall Limestone, Temple Butte Formation, and Muav Limestone, in Grand Canyon

rdf:langString Cambrian

rdf:langString Northern Arizona , central Arizona, southeast California, southern Nevada, and southeast Utah

rdf:langString , at maximum

rdf:langString The Cambrian Muav Limestone is a geologic unit within the 5-member Tonto Group. It is about 650 feet (198 m) thick at its maximum. It is a resistant cliff-forming unit. The Muav consists of dark to light-gray, brown, and orange red limestone with dolomite and calcareous mudstone. The Muav Limestone is overlain in the western Grand Canyon by the late Cambrian Frenchman Mountain Dolostone. Eastward, the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone pinches out and the Mississippian Redwall Limestone, which forms prominent vertical cliffs, directly lies upon the Muav Limestone. The Devonian Temple Butte Formation fill deep paleovalleys that have been cut through the Frenchman Mountain Dolostone and into the Muav Limestone. The Muav is in part younger than, and in-part grades into, the Bright Angel Shale, which is less erosion resistant and is categorized as a slope-forming unit. The Muav is about 350 feet thick in the east and reaches about 600 feet thick in the western part of its exposure area in the Grand Canyon. The two units lie above the erosion-resistant cliff-forming Tapeats Sandstone. In the eastern canyon, the Tapeats Sandstone creates the extremely horizontal Tonto Platform. In west Grand Canyon, the north-south Toroweap Fault is the west perimeter of the Tonto Platform, and west Grand Canyon is dominated by the erosion resistant unit of the Esplanade Sandstone. The Tonto Trail is a mostly horizontal trail on the south side of Granite Gorge, on the Tonto Platform. The Tonto Group units were deposited on an ancient erosion surface (angular unconformity) on the Vishnu Basement Rocks. The Vishnu sequence has a dip of about 45 degrees. As this long-timeframe unconformity represents about 1,000 million years (1.0 billion years) of non–deposition, tectonic activity and erosion, on the Vishnu Basement Rocks, is called the Great Unconformity. Beyond the Grand Canyon area the Muav occurs in southern Utah, southern Nevada and southern California. In the California occurrence it is known as the Muav Marble.

rdf:langString Noble

rdf:langString Muav Canyon, north side of Colorado River

rdf:langString calcareous mudstone

rdf:langString limestone and dolomite