On Top
A hiker stands on an knob of gneiss just north of the parking lot at Beartooth Pass in Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming. The lighter rock is granodiorite that intruded into the gneiss. The hiker at the top of the knob stands at about 11,000 feet above sea level. The rocks exposed here are part of an Archean metamorphic-igneous complex and are between 3.6 and 2.7 billion years ago. These rocks represent a time when Wyoming was a separate microcontinent called the Wyoming Craton which existed 500 million years before the North American Continent formed.
On Top
A hiker stands on an knob of gneiss just north of the parking lot at Beartooth Pass in Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming. The lighter rock is granodiorite that intruded into the gneiss. The hiker at the top of the knob stands at about 11,000 feet above sea level. The rocks exposed here are part of an Archean metamorphic-igneous complex and are between 3.6 and 2.7 billion years ago. These rocks represent a time when Wyoming was a separate microcontinent called the Wyoming Craton which existed 500 million years before the North American Continent formed.