Geology

Professor Bob Schwartz has long recognized the rich and exciting nature of Montana geology. His ongoing research program with students in Montana includes investigations of ancient river and ocean systems and their links with mountain building and other tectonic events. Recently Professor Schwartz and his students have unraveled evidence for a previously unrecognized seaway that inundated the northern Rocky Mountain region during the “age of dinosaurs” and are now working on reconstructing ancient mountain and intervening river-basin systems that developed in the Rockies during the last 30 million years. Students involved in this research need to make detailed sedimentologic, stratigraphic, and petrologic observations, both in the field and in the lab, which builds important critical analysis skills. The results of this research are important for reconstructing the tectonic evolution of Montana and also for delineating natural resources including hydrocarbon and groundwater reservoirs.

Examples of Recent Student Participants and Research Projects

• Mike Haney Research

  

  Summer 2004: Justin Pierson Stratigraphy and sedimentology across the mid-Tertiary unconformity in the Madison intermontane basin

  

  Summer 2006: Jesse Thompson and Katie Pankowski Re-interpretation of Kootenai Formation in western Montana on the basis of new tidal evidence for Early Cretaceous (Neocomian) transgression

  

  Summer 2005: Bekah Ost and Jesse Thompson Provenance of the basal fluvial conglomerate of the Tertiary Madison Valley Formation

  

  Summer 2002: Mike Haney Sedimentology to the estuarine member of the Lower Cretaceous Kootenia Formation in the Missouri River gorge

  
  

  

  Summer 1999: Ann Widrig and Mary Beth Spinelli Sedimentology of the estuarine member of the Lower Cretaceous Kootenai Formation in the Missouri River Gorge