English: (looking ~east)

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This is the southern Funeral Mountains in southeastern California. The bedrock succession in this region consists of Proterozoic to Mississippian marine sedimentary rocks, which are overlain by Cenozoic nonmarine sedimentary rocks. Seen here is the western face of a small ridge just southeast of Bat Mountain.

The light-gray mass is a large mudmound in the Lower Mississippian Tin Mountain Limestone. Mudmounds of this age are often referred to as "Waulsortian mounds", the origins of which are somewhat mysterious. Waulsortian mounds do contain macroinvertebrate fossils, but they are principally composed of fine-grained calcareous sediments ("mud") and completely lack framework-building organisms such as corals. Coral reef environments were hit hard in the Late Devonian, not long before this, at the Frasnian-Famennian mass extinction. They may be microbial bioherms ("reefs"). The Tin Mountain Limestone itself consists principally of crinoidal limestones.

Stratigraphy: Tin Mountain Limestone, Kinderhookian Stage, lower Lower Mississippian

Locality: first ridge southeast of Bat Mountain, southern end of the Funeral Mountains, north of Route 190, between Death Valley & Death Valley Junction, southeastern Inyo County, southeastern California, USA

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See info. at:

<a href="http://www.auburn.edu/~kingdat/waulsortian/waulsort.html" rel="noreferrer nofollow">www.auburn.edu/~kingdat/waulsortian/waulsort.html</a>