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Show Prehistoric Sea Discussed in Articles Petroleum Geologists Find Evidence of Oil and Gas in Commercial Amounts Underlying Utah County Did you know that prehistoric Lake Bonneville once inundated what is today the Springville area? And that marine life of many species inhabited this long-vanished inland sea? Oil geologists now studying this part of Utah county find evidence in the form of fossil remains, etc., that these conditions were manifest here in prehistoric pre-historic geologic times. It is difficult for the present-' day resident of Springville to visualize and to contemplate that where today fertile farmland, fed by the waters of an extensive irrigation ir-rigation system, exiists, a vast inland in-land sea was one time in evidence. evi-dence. Difficult as It may seem, yet, field paleontologists and field oil geologists, now engaged in searches search-es for oil and gas bearing structures struc-tures here in the areas around Springville, have found evidence In the form of fossil remains of prehistoric marine or sea life, which substantiates to the satisfaction satis-faction of scientists in Utah and elsewhere, that a vast inland sea, whose visible remains today is exemplified in the Great Salt Lake, once inundated this part of Present-day Utah. Marine life of many species, such as the remains of ammonoids,, crinolds, trilobites, cephalopods, gastropods, etc., have been found in the Springville area, and these, together with other finds, offer a very educational educa-tional discussion in view of their 'ocal scope. Therefore, in accordance with ts established policy of furnishing furnish-ing the best in local features, the springville Herald will, beginning w'tn its next issue, start the first 01 a special series of non-technical t features, which will deal with scientific finds which have been made in the Springville and Spanish Span-ish Fork areas. These articles have been written exclusively for this newspaper by Ray E. Colton, field vertebrate paleontologist and petroleum geologist, who is a relative rel-ative of Ray Colton, teacher in the local Springville schools. In the articles which Colton has prepared for this newspaper, he will discuss such subjects as the geologic past of the Springville area, prehistoric Lake Bonneville, forms of marine and plant life which at one time existed in this part of present-day Utah, origin of crude oil and how formed from the decayed organisms of long extinct ex-tinct marine and marine-vegetable matter,, and why oil should be beneath be-neath this area of Utah county. Mr. Colton has eight years of actual ac-tual field experience in the major oil and gas producing fields of Oklahoma, Texas, Hew Mexico, California and Louisiana, and he has recently returned from the large producing oil fields of Illinois Illi-nois and Michigan. Watch for this Interesting series ser-ies of articles, which will have extreme reader interest owing to their local scope, and contain high educational value. |