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| Continental drift, Permian to present from geology.com |
Although I don’t get excited about oil wells, they are intimately connected to what we came out here to see. They are pumping oil from the Permian Basin, which 250 million years ago was a large inland sea on the edge of Pangea, the Earth’s supercontinent that later separated into today’s seven continents. In those days, Texas was near the equator only a short distance from the vast Permian ocean. The dinosaurs had not yet emerged, and the earth and sea were teeming with reptiles, beetles, cicadas, sharks, nautiloid ancestors of the squid and octopus, algae, sponges, gastropods, trilobites, and crinoids. For reasons unknown, the close of the Permian period was marked by the largest recorded mass extinction in Earth’s history, in which an estimated 90% of all species were wiped out. Though it sounds like a place in ancient mythology, Pangea was quite real, and its extinct residents left behind more than just fossil impressions in limestone. For better or worse, the petroleum coming out of these pump jacks today is a tangible vestige of Pangea. Given the looming problems created by releasing so much ancient carbon into the atmosphere, perhaps Pangea should be renamed Pandora. When Pandora’s Box was opened by our drilling rigs, who could have known the dangers and threats to the environment and climate that would follow in the wake of the industry and prosperity generated by the black Permian gold?
GENESIS OF THE CAPITAN REEF
Well, that’s all very interesting, but what does it have to do with the Guadalupe Mountains? The Guadalupes are not ordinary mountains. They are actually a large fossil reef called the Capitan Reef that was built over millions of years by living things during the Permian period along the shoreline of an inland sea. This Permian sea was formed by three connected bodies of water located in the areas that are now known as the Marfa, Delaware, and Midland basins. The Capitan Reef fringed almost the entire shoreline of the Delaware Sea for 400 miles. Its builders were mainly algae and sponges that made limey skeletons in much the same way that the present-day Great Barrier Reef is still being made by coral. Eventually the Permian sea dried up and was buried deep beneath the surface and subjected to pressures that converted the remains of its life forms into oil and gas—a process that occurred most abundantly in the Midland Basin. Millions of years later, when the Rocky Mountains were formed, a 50 mile segment of the Capitan Reef was lifted up from its resting place a mile beneath the surface and became the part of the Texas/New Mexico landscape that we now call the Guadalupe Mountains. These mountains have a story to tell about something that I’m a part of, and I wanted to see it for myself.
THE INN
After an eight hour drive, we adhered to our rule of economy and checked into the Super8 in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which is the nearest city of any size to the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas. The price was $49/night—less than the internet price and half the price of the “better” motels in town. Free breakfast, high-speed internet, microwave and frig, small but comfortable, and far superior to a tent. Although the internet turned out to be less than speedy, the place was everything we needed and well worth the price. We had Mexican food at the Cortez Restaurant, a local haunt in town that served rice, beans, and typical Tex-Mex dishes. It was good enough. We turned in early for a good night’s sleep with no chance encounter with Queequeg or any other surprises in the room.
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