In the Great Plains the succession of gross ecological conditions through Neogene and Quaternary time may be interpreted from the stratigraphy, geomorphological history, buried soils, and fossil mollusks and plants. A mild humid climate prevailed over a late-mature erosional topography in earliest Neogene.

Uranium was discovered near Tordilla Hill in Karnes County, south-central Texas, in the fall of 1954, in the upper part of the Jackson formation of late Eocene age.

The Devonian-Mississippian transition outcrops of central Texas are here described summarily and assigned to a new stratigraphic unit, the Houy Formation. The beds included are mainly Upper Devonian, but partly Lower Mississippian. Locally a basal fraction may be Middle Devonian.

The eastern margin of the High Plains in central western Texas affords particularly good opportunity for study of late Cenozoic geology. The topography of the area is dominated by the southernmost segment of the late Tertiary mantle of fluvial sediments, isolated from the central and northern High Plains by the valley of the Canadian River.