Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 28 November 1980:
Vol. 210. no. 4473, pp. 1009 - 1012
DOI: 10.1126/science.210.4473.1009
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Calcite-Impregnated Defluidization Structures in Littoral Sands of Mono Lake, California

PRESTON CLOUD 1 and KENNETH R. LAJOIE 2

1 Department of Geological Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106
2 U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California 94025

Associated locally with well-known tufa mounds and towers of Mono Lake, California, are subvertical, concretionary sand structures through which fresh calcium-containing artesian waters moved up to sites of calcium carbonate precipitation beneath and adjacent to the lake. The structures include closely spaced calcite-impregnated columns, tubes, and other configurations with subcylindrical to bizarre cross sections and predominantly vertical orientation in coarse, barely coherent pumice sands along the south shore of the lake. Many structures terminate upward in extensive calcareous layers of caliche and tufa. Locally they enter the bases of tufa mounds and towers. A common form superficially resembles root casts and animal burrows except that branching is mostly up instead of down. Similar defluidization structures in ancient sedimentary rocks have been mistakenly interpreted as fossil burrows.

Submitted on April 22, 1980
Revised on August 10, 1980


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Radionuclides in Mono Lake, California.
H. J. Simpson, H. J. SIMPSON, R. M. TRIER, J. R. TOGGWEILER, G. MATHIEU, B. L. DECK, C. R. OLSEN, D. E. HAMMOND, C. FULLER, and T. L. KU (1982)
Science 216, 512-514
   Abstract »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)