By: Jacqueline Alvarez

The Journey to Los Gatos Rd. in Coalinga, CA

By: Jacqueline Alvarez

A journey to Los Gatos in Coalinga, CA

I live in Coalinga, Ca so I didn’t travel too far just up to the hills, and I was so intrigued by this interesting pattern in the mountain, you can clearly see layers and when I did some research I found out that this is an ANTICLINE. Coalinga is extremely rich in Petroleum there are many oil fields here. These Anticlines run parallel to the San Andreas Fault. “Anticlines are usually recognized by a sequence of rock layers that are progressively older toward the center of the fold because the uplifted core of the fold is preferentially eroded to a deeper stratigraphic level relative to the topographically lower flanks. The strata dip away from the center, or crest, of the fold.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticline)

As I submerged myself into the hills I lifted my eyes and low and behold I found what wonderful mysteries lie amongst me everyday….

Vaqueros Sandstone

There is hard and soft sandstone, shale, and conglomerate located here in Los Gatos Creek. Overtime the hard sandstone hasn’t been effected as much as the soft sandstone at the base you can see oil and petroleum. “In the early Miocene a sedimentary formation was deposited in Coalinga that is correlative of the formation of Vaqueros Sandstone in the region nearer the coast…These formations are shown by the fact that the fossil remains of mollusks characteristic of lower Miocene time exist in both.” (Ralph Arnold, Robert Anderson 1908)

This milk maid just happened to be blocking a closer view at the rocks.

Granite

I believe this rock to be granite because it was near gravel. It was a hard rock that was in abundance and it has crystals all over it. The texture and feel of the rock also made me think it was granite. It has a very slick feel to it. It has many colors also grey, white red, and different hues intermingled each other, and when I was looking at all the rocks the only type of rock I saw that it resembled was granite.

Conglomerate

This is one rock comprised of many rocks. I believe this rock to be a Conglomerate rock. The way I deciphered this was first by knowing these rocks are sedimentary meaning they accumulated over time. It seems like it’s comprised of cement, and small particles, and different rocks. I zoomed this photo in so you could see all the different rocks that have weathered together. This rock was found by a very fast moving water current in the creek.

Los Gatos in retrospect.

Photo was borrowed from www.picacho.org/joaquin-rocks.html

Temblor Range

The Fauna poses

“ The Temblor Range and surrounding region contains extensive outcrops of the Monterey Formation(Miocene age, about 20 to 9 million years). The Pliocene-age Etchegoin Formation contains marine fossils to about 4 million years old. Fossils of the Etchegoin Formation are supporting evidence that the Coast Ranges and the Temblor Range are young, having been uplifted mostly during the Pleistocene Epoch (or Quaternary) in the past several million years. Much of that ongoing uplift is due to tectonics associated with the San Andreas Fault and other fault systems in the region.”

(www.britannica.com/eb/article-9099958/Temblor-Range)

Snails

Picture of this fossil is Courtesy of The Baker Museum in Coalinga, CA

I was so amazed to learn that Coalinga, Ca was once under water. There are so many snails in Coalinga they are pretty much pests to some people. I went to the Baker Museum to find some Geological significance of the snail and guess what they had actual fossils that I was able to view, I wasn’t able to locate fossils myself but the Baker Museum had them on display and if you look at the fossil you can see how much they have evolved.

I have to be honest I am so excited because this is the first real fossil that I have actually got to view, and its so neat to have a piece of history right here in front of my eyes. The evolutionary process is tremendous in this critter because these snails now live on land, not in water and initially they were in the depths of the sea.

“The earliest known snails were similar in structure to limpets. These creatures lived in shallow sea water and fed on algae and they had a pair of gills. The most primitive of the air-breathing snails (also called pulmonates) belonged to the Family Ellobiidae. Members of this family still lived in water (salt marshes and coastal waters) but they went to the surface for air… When we look back through the fossil record, we can see various tendencies in how snails changed over time. In general the following patterns emerge:

the process of torsion becomes more prominant the shell became increasingly conical and spirally coiled there is an evolutionary tendency among pulmonates towards the

entire loss of a shell”(www.about.com)

California Pine“The oldest known fossil of the pine family (Pinaceae) is a cone from the Lower Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago. The structure of this fossilized pine cone is similar to that of modern cones of the Pinus genus.”(http://science.jrank.org/pages/5234/Pines-Evolution-classification.html)

I believe this tree to be a hard pine, the way I deciphered this was because the bundles were in bundles of 3, and two main veins.

Red Winged Black BirdI was so fortunate to locate this Red Winged Black Bird (on the wire fence) The evolutionary process of birds in my opinion is the most interesting. They initially were reptiles. They emerged 150,000,000 years ago. There bones evolved too they now are hallow and filled with air. The first birds were not skilled fliers like they are now. They were comprised differently. Their feathers and veins were different so they evolved into the amazing aviators they are today.

I read about the worlds first birds in a book I had entitled (The New Book Of knowledge)

Homo Sapien’s have evolved too!

Homo Erectus to Neanderthal to Modern day cuties like these we have evolved like our Environment and we can now fight off disease. Survival of the fittest is no longer a necessary truth.

Igneous Intrusions“Sills are always parallel to beds (layers) of the surrounding country rock. Usually they are in a horizontal orientation, although tectonic processes can cause rotation of sills into near vertical orientations… a sill is a tabular sheet intrusion that has intruded between older layers of sedimentary rock, beds of volcanic lava or tuff, or even along the direction of foliation in metamorphic rock.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sill_(geology)

References Pines - Evolution And Classification - Hard, Soft, Species, and Section -

JRank Articles . (n.d.). Science Encyclopedia - JRank Articles . Retrieved December 3, 2011, from http://science.jrank.org/pages/5234/Pines-

Evolution-classification.html Anticline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Retrieved December 2, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticline Arnold, R., & Anderson, R. (1910). Geology and Oil resources of the Coalinga district

(California), by Ralph Arnold and Robert Anderson, with a Report on the chemical and physical properties of the oils, by Irving C. Allen. Washington: government printing office.

Evolution of Snails. (n.d.). Animals Wildlife - Animal Facts, Animal Pictures, Habitat Facts, Evolution and Zoology. Retrieved December 2, 2011, from http://animals.about.com/od/mollusks/ig/World-of-Snails/Snail-8.htm

Joaquin Rocks. (n.d.). Clear Creek Recreation Area. Retrieved December 2, 2011, from http://www.picacho.org/joaquin-rocks.html

Sill (geology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved December 3, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sill_(geology)

Temblor Range (mountains, California, United States) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 2, 2011, from http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9099958/Temblor-Range

The New book of knowledge. (1984). Danbury, Conn.: Grollier.