Colorado National Monument is a colorful and scenic park just southwest of the town of Grand Junction in western Colorado, USA. It's located in the northeastern part of the Colorado Plateau Physiographic Province, a large section of continental crust that was significant uplifted during the Cenozoic. The rocks in the park are gently folded into a large monocline that has been erosionally dissected into a series of dramatic canyons.

The outcrop shown above is a shale-dominated slope of the Morrison Formation, an Upper Jurassic succession that is widely distributed in many western American states. The Morrison consists of fluvial (river/floodplain) and lacustrine (lake) deposits, plus reddish-colored paleosol horizons. Dinosaur bones and dinosaur tracks are moderately common in Morrison Formation sediments (exceptionally rich localities include Como Bluff in Wyoming, Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, Dinosaur Ridge in Colorado, and the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry in Utah).