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70407 Medicine
Rocks State Park is Montana's "Stonehenge." Great sandstone pillars
of sandstone jutting from the prairie of southwest Montana. |
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Some
Medicine Rocks formations even
resemble England's ring of stone. |
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Medicine Rocks
is one of the few remaining places the public can still discover Native
American artwork. |
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The sandstone
is covered with red pigment. If you're lucky you'll find blue and yellow
pigment on the sandstone walls. |
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We'll used this
formation (picture
above) to help distinguish natural sandstone sedimentary layers from
sandstone stained with red pigment. |
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Approximately
60 to
64 million years ago this area was a sea of sand dunes. A large fresh
water river deposited |
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fine-grained sands
along the shore. Over time the sand compacted into soft sandstone.
You can see a layer of red sandstone in the photo above. |
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70407 This is
what we're looking for. Most of the surviving red stained sandstone is
found in locations protected from the elements. |
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Click here to see how deep the red pigment penetrated the sandstone. |
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How did
they make the red pigment? They
crushed red rock and mixed it with water. |
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The
surround area is nothing but white sandstone. Where did they find the
red rock? We were hoping you would ask... |
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