Did you know southern New Mexico contains parts of five geologic provinces and contains rocks that are nearly two billion years old?

Those are just two of the fascinating facts in a new book, “The Geology of Southern New Mexico’s Parks, Monuments, and Public Lands” (GSNM) published by the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, a research and service division of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro.

The bureau has served as the state’s geological survey for 93 years. The book was edited by Peter A. Scholle, Dana S. Ulmer-Scholle, Steven M. Cather, Shari A. Kelley, Belinda Harrison and Jennifer Eoff, and includes a cover photograph of Organ Mountain-Desert Peaks National Monument by Las Cruces photographer Wayne Suggs.

The 400-page edition is broken into six parts, including these five “broad, overlapping geologic provinces: the Mogollon Slope/Colorado Plateau, the Basin and Range, the Rio Grande rift, the Mogollon-Datil volcanic field and the Great Plains, along with a separate section on the Permian Basin.

 

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