I meant to ask you about this when you mentioned it in another thread. I understand how a coral reef from an ancient ocean could be located in New Mexico, but how did it get to be 15,000 feet below the surface of the earth?
I'm guessing millions of years of sediment?
". . . but how did it get to be 15,000 feet below the surface of the earth? . . . I'm guessing millions of years of sediment?"
Yes, and (to greatly oversimplify) the same upheavals that gave us the Rocky mountains pushed things down at the same time. They got flipped and folded onto themselves (which is probably why they trap natural gas -- the make "little" upsidedown pockets).