NASA in recent months published a satellite photo that shows the Bighorn Canyon with a river snaking through the rock and a red band of color twisted into the yellow and beige browns of the mountains around it.
According to NASA, the red beds seen here are essentially rust. When this land was still the continent Pangea roughly 220 million years ago, tropical storms or 'megamonsoons' created extreme wet and dry seasons that oxidized the sediment and formed the reddish, iron-based mineral deposits seen today.
As Montana State University associate professor Jean Dixon says, the photo shows the result of millions and millions of years of development.
“The curves and the bends that we see in the satellite reflect the depositional environment that these sediments were laid down in [and] the mountain-building event that uplifted and folded them. It’s only sort if you’re able to delve into the modern topography that you really get a feel for the time period over which that happened,” Dixon said.
This region also contains records of human history embedded in its shallower layers.
Those artifacts are in the collections of the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area, which people can visit to camp, boat and hike.
