CPCP: Colorado Plateau Coring Project - 100 million years of early Mesozoic climatic, tectonic, and biotic evolution of an epicontinental basin complex

Early Mesozoic epicontinental basins of western North America contain a spectacular record of the climatic and tec-tonic development of northwestern Pangea as well as what is arguably the world’s richest and most-studied Triassic-Jurassic continental biota. The Colorado Plateau and its environs (Fig. 1) expose the textbook example of these layered sedi-mentary records (Fig. 2). Intensely studied since the mid-nineteenth century, the basins, their strata, and their fossils have stimulated hypotheses on the development of the Early Mesozoic world as reflected in the international lit-erature. Despite this long history of research, the lack ofDespite this long history of research, the lack ofespite this long history of research, the lack of numerical time calibration, the presence of major uncertain-ties in global correlations, and an absence of entire suites of environmental proxies still loom large and prevent integra-tion of this immense environmental repository into a useful global picture. Practically insurmountable obstacles to out-crop sampling require a scientific drilling experiment to recover key sedimentary sections that will transform our understanding of the Early Mesozoic world. To bring our insight into this critical time in Earth history to a new level, we developed the concept of the Colorado Plateau Coring Project (CPCP), an effort to recover continu-ous core spanning the early Mesozoic (Triassic-Jurassic) section of the Colorado Plateau and adjacent areas. The orig-inal basis for this was outlined at the 1999 International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) and U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) funded International Workshop for a Climatic, Biotic, and Tectonic, Pole-to-Pole Coring Transect of Triassic-Jurassic Pangea (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/pangeafinalreport.html, Olsen et al., 1999), section “Western Equatorial Pangea” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/nbcp/westpangea.html). Forty-five researchers from six countries attended the inaugural CPCP planning workshop held 13–16 November 2007, in St. George, Utah. The main goal was to develop a community consensus science plan for the CPCP (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~polsen/cpcp/CPCP_home_page.html). The participants represented disciplines ranging from geochronology and physical stratigraphy through vertebrate paleontology and paleobotany. A plenary session with speak-plenary session with speak-lenary session with speak-ers highlighting the major science issues, precedents, and geoinformatics priorities was followed by thematic breakoutby thematic breakoutthematic breakout groups. These included Stratigraphy, Geochronology and Magnetostratigraphy, Climate and Environments, Paleontology and Biotic Change, and Geoinformatics and Core-log Outcrop Integration. A half-day field trip was madeOutcrop Integration. A half-day field trip was madeutcrop Integration. A half-day field trip was madeIntegration. A half-day field trip was madentegration. A half-day field trip was made to the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm (http://www.sgcity.org/dinotrax/) and Warner Valley outcrops of Triassic-Jurassic strata (Fig. 3), and was followed by a plenary synthesis session. As developed by consensus at the workshop, the goal of the CPCP is to transform our under-standing of the interplay between major biotic transitions, global climate change, plate position, and tectonics over 100 Ma of Earth histories (Fig. 2).