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Tierra Redonda Mountain

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Tierra Redonda Mountain is a mountain in northwestern San Luis Obispo County, California. It is in the eastern portion of the Santa Lucia Range, separated from the main ridge by the Nacimiento River.

Location

The mountain is north of Lake Nacimiento, with the summit being about a mile and a half (two kilometers) from the shoreline near the northwestern extremity of the lake. It is about 18 miles (30 km) from the Pacific Ocean at San Simeon. The elevation of the summit is 2051 feet (625 meters). The primary maintained public road to the mountain is Interlake Road, San Luis Obispo County G14 (also signed in nearby Monterey County as G14), which passes about 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) northeast of the summit. This road intersects U.S. Highway 101 at Paso Robles, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the southeast. Oak Shores Drive winds around the western portion of the mountain from a junction with G14 to the shore of Lake Nacimiento, and Tierra Redonda Road comes around from the east.

The mountain is part of a small island of Bureau of Land Management land, 320 acres, entirely surrounded by private land. BLM has designated it as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC), along with several other BLM holdings in San Luis Obispo County (such as the Carrizo Plain and Cypress Mountain) due to the high concentration of unique, sensitive, and threatened species found in the vicinity, as well as for its singularly rich paleontological resources. This designation is in part because of encroaching development from the south, where private residences are being built on the shore of Lake Nacimiento, within the Oak Shores community. San Luis Obispo County has also designated the region as open space in their General Plan.[1]

Natural setting

Plant communities represented around the mountain include chaparral and blue oak woodlands.

While petroleum exploration is not presently occurring in the vicinity, the potential for oil and gas is considered by the BLM to be moderate.[1] The Vaqueros Formation, which outcrops significantly on the mountain, accounting for its famous fossil beds, is an oil-bearing unit at the South Cuyama and Russell Ranch Oil Fields to the southwest, and the large, prolific San Ardo Oil Field, one of the most active in California, is only ten miles to the northwest, along U.S. 101.[2]

Redonda Formation

It has had two extinct creatures named after it, due to them having been discovered there; the aetosaur Redondasuchus,[3] and the phytosaur Redondasaurus.[4] Other fossils include primarily middle-Miocene creatures[5] such as the redfieldiids Cionichthys and Synorichthys stewarti, the semionotids Semionotus and cf. Hemicalypterus, the lungfish Arganodus, a possible coelacanth, the temnospondyl Apachesaurus gregorii, an unnamed cynodont, the archosauromorph Vancleavea, an unnamed aetosaur, a giant sphenosuchian, and may even have housed fossils of theropod dinosaurs.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b "Chapter 11 - ACECs Coast Management Area - Tierra Redonda". U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management. Retrieved 2008-07-14. Cite error: The named reference "Coast Management Area" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ "Provenance of oil in southern Cuyama basin, California". American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Retrieved 2008-07-17.
  3. ^ "Aetosauria Translation and Pronounciation Guide". www.dinosauria.com. 1996-01-01. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  4. ^ "Phytosauria Translation and Pronounciation Guide". www.dinosauria.com. 1996-01-01. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  5. ^ "Energy Citations Database". www.osti.gov. 2001-05-13. Retrieved 2008-07-14.
  6. ^ "The Microvertebrate Fauna of Shark Tooth Hill, Redonda Formation (Late Triassic, Apachean), Quay County, New Mexico". Andrew B. Heckert, Specer G. Lucas and Adrian P. Hunt, New Mexico Museum of National History. 2005. Retrieved 2008-07-14.

Further reading

  • Subsurface Geology of East-central New Mexico By Roy W. Foster, Richard M. Frentress, Walter Charles Riese. Published 1972, New Mexico Geological Society. Original from the University of Michigan.
  • Bulletin of the Geological Society of America By the Geological Society of America. Published 1890.
  • The San Andreas Fault System By Robert E. Powell, R. J. Weldon, Jonathan C. Matti. Published 1993 Geological Society of America. ISBN 0813711789
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