The Van Horn-Sierra Blanca region lies athwart part of the boundary between two contrasting geologic provinces. The contrast between these two provinces, splendidly displayed by Holocene landforms in the present map area, has a history that dates back to at least Late Precambrian time. This remarkable contrast led R. T. Hill (1902) to suggest the possibility of a transcontinental fracture zone passing near Van Horn and along the boundary of the provinces.

The West Chinati stock, well exposed in San Antonio Canyon and immediately westward on slopes of the southwestern part of the Chinati Mountains, Presidio County, Texas, is a large stocklike body of porphyritic hornblende granite cut by numerous dikes and irregular-shaped plutons of rhyolite, rhyolite porphyry, microgranite, trachyte porphyry, diorite, and igneous breccia.Fissure veins developed in wide and long sheeted zones which strike E-W and N. 50" E.

Fresh-water pond deposits at Ingleside, San Patricio County, Texas, have yielded a large Pleistocene vertebrate fauna. The bones are derived from calcareous sands and marls which overlie a marine lagoonal clay. The locality is located just west of the axis of Live Oak Ridge. This ridge, along with the Ingleside Terrace to the east, was formed as a barrier island and lagoon when sea level was higher than at present.

Geologic map that depicts surface geology of Tarrant, Dallas, Kaufman, Ellis, Johnson, Somervell, and Rockwall Counties and parts of Parker, Hood, Erath, Bosque, Hill, Navarro, Henderson, Van Zandt, and Hunt Counties, Texas.  The 9-page booklet indicates geologic formations, abbreviations, and ages.

Endemic ammonite faunas evolved from cosmopolitan faunas in a series of successive episodes over about 35 million years of the Cretaceous of the Gulf Coast of the United States. During basin-basin-margin tectonic adjustments the Cretaceous barrier reef was inundated or circumvented so that a cosmopolitan fauna entered the back-reef area. Gradual isolation of the fauna behind the barrier produced endemism. With the next basin adjustment the endemic fauna became extinct, and a new cosmopolitan fauna migrated into the back-reef area, likewise evolving into an endemic fauna in its turn.