The Laramie Formation
Laramie Formation - Silhouetted against a blue sky, the Laramie sandstone suggests the prehistoric sand dune it may have been part of.
Sand dunes and coal deposits...
Looking east, from where the Fox Hills Formation begins, the sandstone of the Laramie provides some clues as to the nature of the earlier landscape. White sands, carried by the wind, swirled and came to rest across a semi-arid land.
The exposure at the Rooney Road roadcut can only suggest what was here, for it is only the lower part of a much larger formation. The rest has been eroded. The change in color, from white to grey and brown, roughly where the Laramie sands covered the islands and lagoons of the Fox Hills, represents the permanent change from sea to plain. The Cretaceous Sea was gone.