Why do we see different rock layers in the Grand Canyon?

Mountain building about 725 million years ago lifted and tilted these rocks. Subsequent erosion removed these tilted layers from most areas leaving only the wedge-shaped remnants seen in the eastern Canyon. Rock layers formed during the Paleozoic Era are the most conspicuous in the Grand Canyon's walls.



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Over time, pressure increases as sediment increases, and minerals help form these rock layers. Metamorphic rocks are formed when sedimentary or igneous rocks change due to exposure to heat and/or pressure.

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Impress Your Friends With These Fun Facts!*
  • We don't really know how old it is. ...
  • Grand Canyon creates its own weather! ...
  • There are no dinosaur bones in the canyon. ...
  • But there are lots of other fossils in the area. ...
  • There's a town down in the canyon. ...
  • We're missing 950 million years worth of rocks!


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No Collecting Grand Canyon National Park—a World Heritage Site—belongs to everyone. Please leave everything where you find it; including rocks, plants, firewood, and artifacts.

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Each geological rock layer of the Grand Canyon is a piece of the puzzle of the history of the Earth. Each layer contains clues into what kind of environment was present when the layer was being deposited. As well as the plants and animals that were living during this chapter of time.

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The mystery of the Great Unconformity What's tricky about the Grand Canyon is that the rocks in its walls seem to be missing a big part of the picture. In 1869, a man named John Wesley Powell observed that several layers of rock that should've been in the Canyon walls were not present.

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The Grand Canyon offers one of the most visible examples of a worldwide geological phenomenon known as the Great Unconformity, in which 250 million-year-old rock strata lie back-to-back with 1.2 billion-year-old rocks. What happened during the hundreds of millions of years between remains largely a mystery.

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The Grand Canyon, in the U.S. state of Arizona, is a product of tectonic uplift. It has been carved, over millions of years, as the Colorado River cuts down through the Colorado Plateau. The Grand Canyon is between 5 million and 70 million years old. A canyon is a deep, narrow valley with steep sides.

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09:41 And, right at the bottom, you find the granddaddy of Grand Canyon rocks, granodiorite. This rock is more than 4,000 feet below the rim of the canyon, and it's one of the oldest rocks of them all.

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