Elk Basin
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Elk Basin is a valley on the border of
Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...
and
Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the s ...
in the United States. It is an active oil field with hundreds of derricks operating in it. Geologically, it is a breached
anticline In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core, whereas a syncline is the inverse of an anticline. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the ...
formed by a deep subsurface thrust fault. Most of the rocks at the surface are
Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of ...
in age, including the
Lance Formation The Lance (Creek) Formation is a division of Late Cretaceous (dating to about 69 - 66 Ma) rocks in the western United States. Named after Lance Creek, Wyoming, the microvertebrate fossils and dinosaurs represent important components of the late ...
, Meeteetse Formation,
Mesaverde Formation The Mesaverde Group is a Late Cretaceous stratigraphic group found in areas of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, in the Western United States. History The Mesaverde Formation was first described by W.H.Holmes in 1877 during the Hayden ...
, Cody Shale, and
Frontier Formation The Frontier Formation is a sedimentary geological formation whose strata date back to the Late Cretaceous. The formation's extents are: northwest Colorado, southeast Idaho, southern Montana, northern Utah, and western Wyoming. It occurs in many ...
.


Teaching Geology

As the rock strata in the basin are mostly exposed and relatively easy to identify, Elk Basin has long been used as a place for geology students to learn to practice geologic mapping. Often mapping classes are supported by the Yellowstone Bighorn Research Association,Yellowstone Bighorn Research Association
/ref> located in
Red Lodge, Montana Red Lodge is a city and county seat of Carbon County, Montana, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 2,257. History On September 17, 1851, the United States government signed a treaty with the Crow Nation, cedi ...
.


References

{{coord, 44, 59, 50, N, 108, 52, 10, W, display=title, region:US_source:GoogleEarth Landforms of Carbon County, Montana Landforms of Montana Landforms of Park County, Wyoming Valleys of Wyoming Oil fields in Wyoming