The Tick Canyon Formation (Tt) or Tick Canyon strata, is an

Early Miocene The Early Miocene (also known as Lower Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages: the Aquitanian and Burdigalian stages. The sub-epoch lasted from 23.03 ± 0.05 Ma to 15.97 ± 0.05 Ma (million years ago). It was p ...

geologic formation A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics ( lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock exp ...

in the

Sierra Pelona Ridge The Sierra Pelona, also known as the Sierra Pelona Ridge or the Sierra Pelona Mountains, is a mountain ridge in the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. Located in northwest Los Angeles County, the ridge is bordered on the north by the San ...

of the

San Gabriel Mountains The San Gabriel Mountains ( es, Sierra de San Gabriel) are a mountain range located in northern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Transverse Ranges and lies between ...

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is th ...

. Elsmerecanyon.com: "Tick Canyon Geology"
/ref> The Tick Canyon Basin drains into the Santa Clara River.

Geology

The formation overlies the

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but ...

Lower Miocene The Early Miocene (also known as Lower Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages: the Aquitanian and Burdigalian stages. The sub-epoch lasted from 23.03 ± 0.05 Ma to 15.97 ± 0.05 Ma (million years ago). It was prec ...

Vasquez Formation The Vasquez Formation (Tvz) is a geologic formation cropping out at the eponymous Vasquez Rocks in southern California. The formation dates to the Late Oligocene to Early Miocene ( Arikareean in the NALMA classification). Description The V ...

, and underlies the

Upper Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million years ago) to 5.333 Ma. The ...

Mint Canyon Formation The Mint Canyon Formation (Tm) is a Miocene geologic formation in the Sierra Pelona Mountains of Los Angeles County, southern California. The formation preserves fossils dating back to the Middle to Late Miocene ( Barstovian and Clarendonian ...

. The Tick Canyon strata was deposited on land mostly by streams and consists of green

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

s, coarse-grained conglomerates, and red

claystone Mudrocks are a class of fine-grained siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. The varying types of mudrocks include siltstone, claystone, mudstone, slate, and shale. Most of the particles of which the stone is composed are less than and are too sm ...

s. Caltech.edu: THESIS - "Geology of the Upper Tick Canyon area, California"
Birman, Joseph Harold; 1950.Caltech.edu: THESIS - "Geology of the Mint Canyon area, Los Angeles County, California"
Holser, William T.; 1946 The Tick Canyon strata also contain abundant volcanic clasts, most of which resemble volcanic rocks of the Vasquez Formation.Coffey et al., 2019, p.481 It has an average thickness of . North of the Tick Canyon Fault, the beds are almost vertical.

Fossil content

It preserves vertebrate

fossils A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

of the

subperiod of the Miocene epoch, in the Neogene Period of the

Cenozoic Era The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configu ...

.Tick Canyon
at

Fossilworks Fossilworks is a portal which provides query, download, and analysis tools to facilitate access to the Paleobiology Database, a large relational database assembled by hundreds of paleontologists from around the world. History Fossilworks was cre ...

.org

Mammals

Artiodactyl The even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla , ) are ungulates—hoofed animals—which bear weight equally on two (an even number) of their five toes: the third and fourth. The other three toes are either present, absent, vestigial, or pointing poste ...

s ** '' Miolabis californicus'' ** '' Merychyus calaminthus''Lander & Lindsay, 2011 ** '' M. minimus''Whistler, 1967 *

Perissodactyl Odd-toed ungulates, mammals which constitute the taxonomic order Perissodactyla (, ), are animals—ungulates—who have reduced the weight-bearing toes to three (rhinoceroses and tapirs, with tapirs still using four toes on the front legs) ...

s ** '' Parahippus maxsoni''Jahns, 1940 ** '' Parahippus sp.''Maxson, 1930 *

Rodent Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the Order (biology), order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are roden ...

s ** '' Archaeolagus acaricolus''Dawson, 1958 ** '' Trogomys rupinimenthae''Reeder, 1960

Birds

Falconiformes The order Falconiformes () is represented by the extant family Falconidae (falcons and caracaras) and a handful of enigmatic Paleogene species. Traditionally, the other bird of prey families Cathartidae (New World vultures and condors), Sagit ...

** '' Miohierax stocki''Howard, 1944

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * {{cite LSA , last=Maxson , first=J. H , year=1930 , title=A Tertiary mammalian fauna from the Mint Canyon Formation of Southern California , journal= Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication , volume=404 , pages=77–112