Peter R. Rose, Ph.D., independent prospector and consultant, and Texas Geologist for over 60 years
Biography: Dr. Pete Rose (Ph. D., Geology, University of Texas, Austin) has been a professional geologist for 62 years, specializing in Carbonate Stratigraphy, Petroleum Geology, E&P Risk Analysis, and Mineral Economics. Before going on his own in 1980 as an independent prospector and consultant, he worked for Shell Oil Company, the United States Geological Survey, and Energy Reserves Group, Inc, a small-cap Independent.
After 10 years as an internationally-recognized authority on economic risking of exploration drilling ventures, he founded Rose & Associates, LLP, in 1998. Pete retired in 2005; the firm continues as the global standard among consulting companies in that field, providing instruction, software and consulting services on an international scale.
Pete wrote the definitive geological monograph on the Edwards Limestone of Texas (Rose, 1972). His 2001 book, Risk Analysis and Management of Petroleum Exploration Ventures, now in its 7th printing, is considered by many as the “Bible” on that topic, and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. He has authored or co-authored more than 80 published articles on an extremely wide variety of geological topics (Micropaleontology to Petroleum Economics). He was a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Geological Society of London.
In 2005 he was the 89th President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, an international organization that is the largest professional geological society in the world (>37,000 members).
In 2006-07 he was a member of the National Petroleum Council, involved with their summary of the global energy situation, Facing the Hard Truths about Energy, and was also deeply involved in successful efforts to encourage the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission to modernize its rules governing estimation and disclosure of oil and gas reserves, thus facilitating the investment component of the “shale revolution” in the U. S.
In 2013, the Geological Society of London awarded Peter R. Rose its prestigious Petroleum Group Medal for lifetime contributions to Petroleum Geology, the first American to be so recognized, and in 2014 the American Association of Petroleum Geologists honored him with its Halbouty Outstanding Leadership Award.
Pete is a 5th-generation Texan. He and his wife Alice have 5 children and 8 grand-children. They divide their time between Austin and their El Segundo Ranch near Telegraph, Texas. In retirement, he took up a new career as a historian: in September 2012, Texas Tech University Press published his book, The Reckoning: the Triumph of Order on the Texas Outlaw Frontier, about the coming of Order and Law to the western Hill Country and Edwards Plateau regions of Texas (1873-1883). Since turning 80, he has published four major papers on Lower Cretaceous stratigraphy: Rose (2016, 2017, 2019, 2021, GCAGS Journal) He is also well known for field trips he leads with Dr. Charles Woodruff into the Texas Hill Country that combine the topics of Geology, Wineries, and Frontier History.
Abstract: The Wichita Paleoplain is the regional unconformity between Lower Cretaceous basal transgressive deposits and the Jurassic, Triassic, Paleozoic, and Precambrian rocks that lie immediately beneath them in the southwestern United States. This ancient buried erosion surface is here investigated and mapped in Central Texas at three levels of detail, applying principles derived from each phase to succeeding phases: 1) on the southeast flank of the Llano Uplift in detail (Phase One); 2) across the Llano Uplift and surroundings at intermediate detail (Phase Two); and 3) at regional scale throughout central Texas, synthesizing work from many sources (Phase Three).
Over most of the area, the Wichita Paleoplain is a notably regular surface with local relief of less than 100 feet. To the south, however, the Llano Uplift, which served as a structural buttress around which curved the Ouachita structural belt, represented uplift and faulting related to the late Pennsylvanian Ouachita Orogeny, followed by a long period of weathering and erosion. Vertical uplift of about 4,500 feet and fault displacements of as much as 3,000 feet characterize the tectonic effects of the Ouachita Orogeny. The Wichita Paleoplain was present over all of that complex terrain. Local paleotopographic relief on the Wichita Paleoplain ranges up to about 400 feet in and around the Llano Uplift, associated with high-standing fault blocks of Paleozoic carbonate formations and juxtaposed lowlands underlain by Precambrian crystalline rocks. Analogous paleotopographic relief was present over faulted Paleozoic highs to the west, such as the Edwards Arch, the Devils River Uplift, the Ozona Arch, and the Brown-Bassett structural complex.
Over most of the Llano Uplift, the transgressive sequence of Hensel Sandstone, Glen Rose Formation and Edwards Limestone successively filled-in paleotopography on the Wichita Paleoplain. Remarkably, present-day topography appears to have been influenced by paleotopography of the Wichita Paleoplain: today’s valleys and ridges commonly overlie corresponding valleys and ridges on the Wichita Paleoplain, even though the thick regional blanket of Edwards Limestone lies (or once lay) between them. Also, outliers of Edwards Limestone around the Llano Uplift tend to overlie buried highs on the Wichita Paleoplain. Differential compaction was probably involved in this concomitance.
Elsewhere, distribution of some ridges and valleys on the landscape of the Wichita Paleoplain bear little resemblance to today’s stream drainage patterns. For example, the San Saba River may have drained northeastward into the East Texas Embayment, and the Colorado River may not have been a through-flowing stream. Three Wichita Paleoplain valley drainage systems located in the southern Llano Uplift and related western terranes apparently drained southward into the Rio Grande Embayment.
When corrected for 1) regional northwest rise related to Neogene uplift of the Colorado Plateau; 2) the crescentic sedimentary wedge of Glen Rose sediments thickening gulfward from the Llano Uplift; 3) late Cretaceous and Paleogene regional dip into the Gulf Coast Basin; and 4) Neogene Balcones uplift of the Edwards Plateau, the Wichita Paleoplain appears as a vast, remarkably flat lowland broken only by scattered ranges of hills over the Llano and Devils River uplifts, and the Edwards and Ozona arches.