The name Crane Canyon Sequence was given to a thick structurally complicated limestone and shale unit exposed on the west side of the Toiyabe Range near the Lander-Nye County boundary (Means, 1962).

The Crane Canyon Sequence is considered Middle and Late Cambrian on the basis of abundant trilobite faunas. The Crane Canyon is conformably overlain by the Goodwin Limestone of the Pogonip Group at Mount Callaghan and near Austin in the Toiyabe Range (Stewart and McKee, 1977). It is equivalent in age to the Dunderberg-Windfall interval in the Eureka District, and a lithologic facies of the Palmetto Formation.

In the Toiyabe Range the Crane Canyon Sequence is comprised of laminated to thin-bedded, light to dark-gray, platy limestone and minor dark-gray to olive shale which is in places a slate. Thin beds of light-gray to yellow-brown silty limestone and calcareous or siliceous shale and siltstone are locally abundant (Stewart and McKee, 1977). Thin black chert layers are present in a few areas. The lower portion of the formation is generally composed of as much as several hundred feet of slate and argillite overlain by evenly bedded and laminated marble. The upper portion is commonly several thousand feet of gray to yellow-brown impure limestone and shale (Kleinhampl and Ziony, 1985).

Lack of distinctive marker beds and complex folding and faulting make estimates of thickness unreliable, however about 6,000 feet of Crane Canyon Sequence have been mapped in the Mount Callahan area by Stewart and Palmer (1967).

The Crane Canyon Sequence is only exposed within the Toiyabe and southern Shoshone Range.

The depositional setting is poorly documented for the Crane Canyon Sequence. The presence of abundant trilobites, thin laminations within the shales and limestones, and chert layers suggest deposition in basinal settings below wave base. The depositional setting for the Crane Canyon may well have been similar to the Roberts Mountains Formation within local depressions along the outer shelf.